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THREE LECTURES 



DELIVERED IN THE CITY OF CINCINNATI, IN 
OCTOBER, 1869. 



Rev. a. D. MAYO 




CINCINISrATI: 
ROBERT CLARKE & CO., PRINTERS, 

65 West Fourth Street. 
1869. 



Relip-ion in the Common School. 



For the last month the Board of Education in Cincinnati has 
been agitated by two questions, on whose decisi'on the very exist- 
ence of our present system of free pubhc education depends. 

First, a proposition was made to the Board by the Catholic 
Archbishop Purcell for a conference respecting the conditions on 
which the Catholic schools of this city should be united with the 
public schools. The Board, with great courtesy, appointed a com- 
mittee, every member of which was understood to be favorable to 
a union if it could be achieved without sacrifice of the fundamental 
principles of the American system of free schools. A conference 
was held, and the Archbishop virtually proposed that the city of 
Cincinnati should support Catholic religious schools with the public 
money. As this proposition was in direct hostility both to the fun- 
damental idea of the American free school system, and the Con- 
stitution of the State of Ohio, both of which forbid the support of 
sectarian religious schools by the taxation of the whole people, it 
was unanimously rejected — not one member of the Board uttering 
a word in its favor. The Archbishop suggested that the Com- 
mittee of Conference should remain in session until he was able to 
consult Pope Pius IX upon the whole subject ; and several of the 
members of the Board, including the President, voted in favor of 
waiting for consultation with a prince, politically the most insig- 
nificant in Europe, the only prince in the world who recognized 
our late rebel confederacy, in regard to the education of the citizens 
of the Republic of the United States. This astounding proposition 
was buried under an overwhelming majority, and there is no prob- 
ability that the question of the union of Catholics and public 
schools will again come before the present Board. Next spring, 
twenty of the forty seats in that body become vacant, and the peo- 
ple can determine whether they shall be filled by men who favoj 
the surrender of the great vital principle of American public educa- 
tion to the demands of any religious sect. 

But now comes up another question, equally momentous, alike 
involving a fundamental change in our system of public instruction. 



^ Religion in the 



The Constitution of Ohio declares that the public school moneys 
shall not be used in support of any religious or other sect. The 
proposition now is to banish religion itself from all the public 
schools of Cincinnati ; a proceeding which would deliver up our 
magnificent system of instruction to the smallest, least influential 
and most intolerant of all sects, the sect of atheists \ "the other 
sect" which denies the existence of God, the spiritual nature of 
man, the union of religion and morality and the immortality of the 
soul'. It proposes virtually to place the million dollars, now raised 
for the education of the people in this city, and the fifty thousand 
school-children of Cincinnati, in the ha:nds of a sect which denies 
every great religious belief that has prevailed since the creation of 
the world. 

This is a proposition narrower and more intolerant than that of 
the Archbishop, inasmuch as it favors a sect of far less importance, 
and cuts up public religion itself by the roots. It is equally obnox- 
ious to the Constitution of Ohio, and should it prevail, would be 
the instantaneous destruction of our public schools. The former 
proposition came from without, and was unanimously rejected. 
The latter was offered by Mr, S. A. Miller, a new representative 
from the seventeenth ward, who informed the Board that twenty- 
six members were pledged to its adoption. Twenty-one members 
are required to pass it, and as there has yet been no real discussion 
on the merits of the question, this boast was doubtless premature. 
The resolution lies upon the table, a slumbering monster, ready to 
sleep the sleep of death, or start into tremendous life, according to 
the will of its mover. 

Understand me. I do not charge that any member of the Board 
of Education is an atheist. On the broad field of public affairs, I 
bandy theological epithets with no man. I do not charge on the 
mover of these resolutions, or any gentleman who will vote for 
them, the premeditated design of either destroying our public schools 
or delivering them into the hands of any sect whatever. I impugn 
the motives of none of my colleagues. I only look on the face of 
these resolutions, so carefully drawn, so deep and comprehensive 
in their scope, supported by men whose boast is their admiration of 
strict logic, and I declare my conviction that, if adopted, they will 
make the public schools of Cincinnati, schools of atheism, and place 
the whole education of the people's children in the hands of that 
" other sect," whose one point of theology is the denial of the pos- 
sibility of religion for any human soul. The following are the 
resolutions : 

^'■Resolved, That religious instruction and the reading of religious 
books, including the Holy Bible, are prohibited in the common 
schools of Cincinnati, it being the true object and intent of this 
rule to allow the children of the parents of all sects and opinions 



Cormnon Schools. 



in matters of faith and worship, to enjoy alike the benefit of the 
common school fund. 

'■'■ Resolved., That so much of the Regulations on the Course of 
Study and Text Books, in the Intermediate and District Schools 
(page 213, Annual Report) as reads as follows : 'The opening ex- 
ercises, in every department, shall commence by reading a portion 
of the Bible, by or under the direction of the teacher, and appro- 
priate singing by the pupils,' be repealed." 

The gist of the whole matter is found in the first two lines : 
" That religious instruction and the reading of religious books are 
prohibited in the common schools." This goes to the bottom of 
the whole matter, and sets not only the Bible and religious music, 
but religion itself, adrift down stream, leaving the schools utterly 
expurgated of every thing to which any materialistic atheist could 
object. The public conscience has been aroused, as bv a thunder- 
clap, at the suggestion that the Bible must be removed from the 
public schools. Even that genial optimist, the Cincinnati Com- 
mercial, is grieved that Old Hundred can no longer be sung to 
soothe the rampant passions of naughty boys and wrathful peda- 
gogues. But these are subordinate considerations. Were it pro- 
posed so to read the Bible that only those passages which most 
simply and concisely express the religious faith of mankind should 
be read, omitting all outside and above the average comprehension 
of little children, especially those portions on whose interpretation 
the greatest of Biblical scholars are divided, that would be a different 
question. 

Were it proposed to expurgate our music books of all sectarian 
hymns and songs, if such there be, or to inquire if any teacher 
is going outside the common platform of religion in the matter of 
instruction, that would be another question. If abuses of this kind 
exist, there is a remedy at hand, amply provided for under the 
present school regulations. But the friends of this resolution have 
charged no such abuses and invited no such investi2;ation. In their 
eyes, the sovereign offense is that religion in any form is brought 
in contact with the public schools. For this disease, they propose 
the heroic treatment of the destruction of religion itself in every 
school-house in the city. Almost every religious sect in the United 
States has been guilty of persecuting its rival sects, in behalf of its 
own religion ; but I apprehend this is the first time in America 
when a persecution and prohibition of religion itself has been or- 
ganized in the very heart of the commonwealth, the republic of the 
little children. 

Let us trace the practical effect of this prohibition in the public 
schools in Cincinnati. 

First. The Hebrew and Christian Scriptures are wholly excluded 



6 Religion in (he 



and no verse therefrom can be read or quoted inside the public 
schools. 

Second. All reliEjious music, including, of course, most of the 
highest music in the world, which is religious, is turned out, and the 
children are left to find such comfort as they may in harmony 
divorced from all the higher sentiments of man. 

Third. All literature, ancient and modern, which refers to or 
recognizes religion, must be put out from the public schools. Thus, 
by one atheistic " bull" an interdict is placed over all the highest 
literature of the world. Homer, and Plato, and Virgil, Milton and 
Shakspeare, and Humboldt and Goethe, and all the highest En- 
glish and American literature goes, and the scholars are left to read 
and digest only works of pure science, mathematics, such philoso- 
phy and history as repudiate religion, and such poets as the Roman 
Lucretius, the German Heinzen and the American Walt. Whit- 
man. 

Fourth. All religious art is banished by the same blow. Not 
one of the master-pieces of religious art, which we cross the ocean 
to behold, could be hung upon the walls of the public school- 
room. 

Fifth. Our whole series of American school-books, excepting, 
perhaps, the mathematical books, must be swept out as so much 
waste paper. The school-readers now in use contain not only the 
choicest passages from the Bible, but also many of the noblest 
selections from the best authors of the English and German tongue 
which inculcate religion. We banish, with these books, the sweet- 
est poems of our own Longfellow, and Bryant, and Sprague, of 
Mrs. Hemans and Wordsworth, the grand soliloquy of Cato on 
Immortality by Addison, the glorious strains of Milton, the Farewell 
Address of Washington. Every series of school readers in Amer- 
ican use recognizes and inculcates religion. They must all go. 
Everything in history that touches upon the religious progress of 
the race must go. If the geography, or the book of science, de- 
clares the world was made by God, that, too, must go, and a com- 
mittee must be appointed to prepare a series of school books worthy 
to be read by children who have no souls — who recognize no 
Father in heaven. 

Sixth. Every little boy that declaims on the school platform, must 
be watched lest he should declaim in favor of religion. If, in fond 
imitation of us in our youthful days, he starts off" with the resound- 
ing lines : 

" The spacious firmament on high. 
And all the bhie ethereal skv. 
And spangled heavens, a shining frame, 
Their great Original proclaim," 



Common Schools. 7 



the Principal shouts: "Stop, boy; the great Original is an uncon- 
stitutional and unknown quantity in the schools of Cincinnati." A 
little girl, brooding over her first composition, may tell the story of 
her loves for pussy and canary ; but if, fresh from the bereavement 
at home, she writes: "Our little baby died yesterday, and God has 
taken it to heaven to be an angel forever," blotting the paper with 
her tears, her little essay goes into the waste-basket; for within 
these walls there is no God, there are no angels, there is no forever 
in heaven. 

Seventh. All instruction, or exhortation, or conversation by the 
teachers, enforcing the religious duty of love to God and love to 
man, must come to an end, and nothing must be said which will 
provoke the objection of any man who believes that the common 
moralities of life have no deeper root than the varying custom of 
the hour. 

Eighth. The new Public Library is established and will be sup- 
ported by the money of the whole people, and will be an educator 
of our youth not inferior to the public schools. Do these gentle- 
men propose to carry their logic inside those spacious alcoves, and 
make it solely a collection of the atheistic writings of the world ? 

But this is only the superficial result of this proposition. After 
all, the children in our public schools are educated by the manhood 
and womanhood of their teachers more than all their studies. Do 
these educational reformers suppose that our present teachers, who 
believe in religion — many of them eminent for the elevation of 
their religious character — will submit to this revival of religious 
persecution ? What noble. God-fearing man, what tender Christian 
or Hebrew woman, will stand there to be worried, and watched and 
pestered by a little sect that repudiates all that makes man and 
woman divine ? And when they shake the dust from their feet 
and leave those godless halls, and their places are filled by men 
who scorn the imputation of a spiritual nature, and wome;i — oh ! 
save us from that — who have cut adrift from the eternal verities of 
life, do these reformers suppose the people will pay a million dol- 
lars a year to perpetuate this new philosophic Utopia, or hand over 
their fifty thousand children to be experimented with and educated 
on the theory that they are only thinking animals ! 

If it be probable that the bodies of men are shaped and toned by 
the physical region in which they live, so is it a thousand times more 
probable that the souls of children are exalted and expanded, or de- 
pressed and narrowed by the spiritual climate and style of character 
with which they are brought in contact. They now grow up in 
the genial and enlivening atmosphere of religious faith, and hope, 
and trust ; are we ready to banish them to the bleak and wintry 
realm of a life without a future, and a universe without a God.? 

For religion is no sect,. no book, no interloper in human affairs. 



8 Religion in the 



Religion is older than Protestant or Catholic, than Christian or 
Hebrew, than Mohammedan or Pagan faith. The Bible and all 
special forms and creeds are but its children. 

If there is one thing that is universal, one sentiment that makes 
men human, one influence that is cosmopolitan, one golden chain 
which, clasped by Adam's hand and felt after by the trembling 
fingers of the last new-born child, binds all created men in one 
family, unites nations and races and ages in a sublime brotherhood, 
and passing upward is lost in the mysterious universe peopled by 
myriads of created intelligences and pervaded by the spirit of infi- 
nite love, that golden chain is Religion. No nation ever existed 
that was not founded upon it ; no human institutions that have re- 
pudiated the worship of God and the religious and moral duties of 
man, have been able to stand upright in this world. All the occu- 
pations of human life are organized around the universal religious 
faith of man. The family, the school, the whole machinery of 
human government, no less than the church, are built upon this 
universal faith. Whether expressed or understood, religion is pres- 
ent, visible like the light or invisible like the air, the element which 
binds all together and makes life itself a blessing. 

There has always been in the world a class of people who have 
denied the possibility of religion in their philosophical theories, 
though compelled to recognize it in every act of their lives. A 
gracious providence for a brief hour committed the destinies of one 
nation to their charge, and they ruled it long enough to make that 
one chapter in the history of France the " bloodiest record on the 
book of time." That sect exists to-day in the United States, or- 
ganized and engineered by men who have thought themselves out 
of the world of divine realities into a universe of philosophical 
negations. 

Its chief strength is in the new cities of the West, those strange 
accumulations of humanity, where every phase of human folly and 
madness, every conflict between good and evil that has vexed man- 
kind in the past, is to be confronted anew. We meet it at every 
step. It challenges every idea and institution especially dear to the 
American heart. It proposes nothing less than to empty American 
public and private life of everything that has been held divine and 
eternal by the human race; to blot out the spiritual firmament 
above; to pull down the mountain ranges of aspiration, and fill up 
the oceans of deep and fathomless trust, and change life to a level 
plain of materialistic existence. By playing upon the political and 
social ambitions of the people, it has acquired a temporary and 
factitious power. 

And now, emboldened by past success, it stalks into that sacred 
realm of American society, the people's common school, demand- 
ing that all recognition of religion shall be expelled therefrom. It 



Common Schools. 9 



is prepared to unite with the bitterest enemy of public education to 
achieve its purpose. It boasts that "it is ready to fight this battle 
through to the bitter end." Well, so let it be. For one, I am fully 
prepared for the issue, and have not a moment's doubt which side 
to take. Let us put by all compromises, "lay aside every weight," 
and stand up square to the fight. Shall religion be banished from 
the public schools of the United States? I will work with men of 
all religions and of no religion, asking no questions, making no com- 
parisons, in the glorious common cause of American civilization. 
I will not even ask what is the religion of my colleagues in the 
Board of Education so long as we toil together as brethren to build 
up that beautiful system of instruction, which, repudiating alike 
sectarianism and atheism, abides on the high plateau of the religious 
obligation of all mankind. 

But the moment either archbishop or atheist demands the sur- 
render of that citadel of American liberty, that stronghold of the 
human race, the right to apply religion everywhere in public and 
private life, I can no longer vote with that man though he were 
the son of my own mother and the dearest friend of my life ; and 
I warn the people of this city and this State that the moment when 
they begin to yield either to the threats or the blandishments of a 
religious or an atheistic sect, though the one may appear clad with 
all the sacred associations and awful sanctions of the infallible 
church of the living God, or the other may boast itself as the 
infallible leader of the only science and culture of the age, that 
moment the great system of the public education of the American 
people, built up by the toil and treasure of our fathers, sanctified 
by the prayers and watered by the tears of generations of parents, 
cherished in the grateful memory of succeeding generations of their 
children, the guardian of our liberties and the hope of our republic, 
will begin to dissolve, and every step that way is a step toward its 
destruction. 

What are the potent reasons for this expulsion of religion from 
the common schools of Cincinnati ? It is whispered about that if 
we will put religion out, many parents who believe in the Catholic 
faith will put their children in. But if there is anything fixed in the 
Catholic church, it is that religion and education must go hand in 
hand. The Catholic church all over the world, through its infalli- 
ble authorities, is engaged in drawing Catholic youth into schools 
exclusively controlled by itself, on the very ground that in all other 
institutions of learning, religious instruction is neglected. We are 
now gravely told that the one condition of bringing Catholic youth 
into our public schools, is to make the schools atheistic ! When 
the Catholic clergy and laity of Cincinnati will appear before the 
Board of Education, and declare that if religion is expelled they 



10 Religion in the 



will come in and abide with us, it will be time to give this argument 
a serious and prayerful consideration. 

But the grand argument for this "reform" is a legal argument. 
The Board of Education, in days past, has not been wanting in 
respectable lights of the law. A Storer, a King, a Fisher, have 
presided over its deliberations with consummate dignity and knowl- 
edge. Other well-known eminent lawyers have graced those seats, 
and have not been unwilling to instruct their colleagues in the 
mysteries of the law. The legal brigade of the board has not been 
so feeble, either in numbers or in commanding reputation for years ; 
perhaps never has there been so little commanding legal talent in 
that body as at present. It is somewhat significant that as the great 
lawyers go out, this new legal crusade against religion comes in. 
The great men, whose legal nod was enough to quiet our parlia- 
mentary strifes, were so blind that they never discovered that we 
were supporting an illegal institution in the public schools. Now 
comes the new day of illumination, in which it is suddenly and 
triumphantly announced that not onlv in the common school, but 
through the whole length and breadth of American public affairs, 
religion is unconstitutional. 

It is also a little remarkable that this announcement so far is 
bottomed solely upon the decision of Judge Thurman and the 
Supreme Court of the State, which decision, it is asserted, is to the 
effect that to the Constitution of Ohio religion is unknown; that 
the State and all our public institutions are secular in the sense that 
they are atheistic. For atheism itself is onlv the denial of God, 
and the State that through all its public policy utterly ignores 
religion is an atheistic State. Now, I do not propose to intrude 
upon the province of the law, or presume to crowd upon the path 
so ably trod by the eloquent and learned orators of last Tuesday 
evening. But, as a citizen of Ohio and the United States, cer- 
tainly not indifferent to religion by my calling in life, I would say a 
word on the general bearings of this astounding assertion. 

Even were there such a decision as is claimed, we must remem- 
ber that in the American republic all official power is delegated, 
and not even a supreme court is infallible authority. Especially on 
such mighty themes as liberty and religion, which are the founda- 
tions of civilization itself, there is no infallible authority outside 
the final, solemn, deliberate judgment of the people ; and even that 
decision only holds until, by appeal to the God of truth and justice, 
the hearts of the people themselves may be changed and an un- 
righteous judgment reversed. Plato says: "Atheism is a disease 
of the soul before it becomes an error of the understanding ;" and 
certainly the people of Ohio have never delegated to anv body of 
lawyers the infallible authority to expel Almighty God from the 
State. It would be strange, indeed, if they should deny to the 



CoTtnnon Schools. 11 



church the infallible power to establish a sect of religion and confer 
upon the courts the infallible power to declare the State of Ohio 
an atheistic political corporation. We have not forgotten that ten 
years ago a majority of the judges of the Supreme Court of the 
United States denied the right of American citizenship to one- 
eighth of the American people, and declared the Constitution of the 
United States the great propagandist of human slavery, suggesting 
that black men had no rights that white men are bound to respect. 
The people of the United States found that decision, with a good 
deal of unwholesome rubbish of the same sort, among the rebel 
effects at Appomattox Court-house, and it now sleeps in the same 
museum as the Confederate bonds, the captured robes of the rebel 
president, and the C. S. A. 

They reconstructed their Supreme Court, and presented every 
judge with a new pair of spectacles, whereby he could behold 
liberty interlined through all the history and the fundamental law 
of the nation, and, lest those glasses should become dim, they have 
been engaged for the last five years in writing human freedom all 
over the Constitution in letters so large and brilliant that even the 
wayfaring man, though a fool, might read their sovereign will aright. 
It now appears that the courts of Ohio are called upon to make the 
more amazing decision that this glorious State, as a government, 
repudiates religiofi. Had any court thus decided, it might be pru- 
dent, in view of past events, to wait two years, when the people 
of Ohio will reconstruct their constitution, and obtain their final 
judgment, before the School Board embarks on the extensive 
operation of reading Almighty God out of the common schools. 

But we are comforted by the assurance of our most eminent 
lawyers, that this decision referred to has no such meaning as is 
forced upon it; that it is simply a strong rhetorical statement of 
the well-known principle that the State of Ohio does not punish 
crimes and offenses because they are contrary to the Christian or 
any other form of religion ; that in view of the strife between 
religious parties and sects, and the interminable conflict of eccle- 
siastical powers, the State has taken up all of religion and morality 
necessary for the public guidance of the people, in the form of 
statute and common law, which it administers on its own authority. 
The State is secular at everv point where any form of religion 
comes in, and claims the right to administer justice by its own 
ecclesiastical or religious authority. And that is just as it should 
be. We can not guard too strictly against the encroachments of 
ecclesiastical power, and while we confess that the authority of 
God and His law is always binding upon the conscience and the 
life of every cicizen, we empower the State to organize the grand 
eternal verities of justice, humanity, and religion, into a political 
constitution and government, and administer it on human authority, 



12 Religion in the 



appealing, in the words of our martyr president, " to the deliberate 
judgment of posterity and the gracious favor of Almighty God." 

What I assert is this : That the people of Ohio, like the people 
of every State that ever existed on earth, have recognized, and do 
recognize, the fact that religion and morality, the obligation to 
worship God and do good to man, are the very foundation of 
human society itself, the basement structure of their whole form 
of government, the sanction of all their laws, and the final judge 
of all their public policy. They have never been so mad as to 
assert that justice, freedom, humanity, religion, can be made or 
unmade at Columbus, Ohio. These are eternal. They existed 
when Ohio was a pathless forest ; by virtue of them alone is Ohio 
the commonwealth she is ; they will abide when historians will 
divide on the question, if the existence of Ohio is not an unstable 
myth of the past. 

According to our frail and wavering, through growing wisdom, 
we have organized as much as we can comprehend and apply of 
those majestic realities into the government and institutions of our 
beloved State, administering that government, as we act in all 
human affairs, by the authority we hold as children of the feather 
in heaven. As the years roll on, we hope to make our institutions 
conform more and more to the spirit of these eternal laws of life, 
for all human government is at last but "the re-enactment of the 
law of God ;" and surely it is a sight that may well arouse our pity 
or provoke our indignation, when men, clad in the dignity of official 
position, bound by solemn oath to God to administer public affairs, 
lift up their voices and proclaim the expulsion of God and religion 
from the State. 

We learn that such men are surprised at the excitement in this 
community ; at the deep apprehension which runs through the 
homes, the churches, and the schools ; that arouses our too slug- 
gish population to such demonstrations as we have witnessed ; and 
hints are darkly given that such people as flood the Board of 
Education with petitions, and crowd the Music Hall, and hold 
counsel with each other everywhere, are the instigators of mob law 
and personal violence! We beg them to calm their apprehensions. 
Religion is not so near its end in Cincinnati yet, that it must fly to 
carnal weapons in self-defense. Religion is not on the defensive at 
all in this matter. 

In a time of profound tranquility, while the people are rejoicing 
with pride in their common schools, paying a million dollars a year 
for their support, and crowding our school-houses with their 
children, they are suddenly appalled by the fear that a Catholic 
and an Atheistic sect have struck hands to divide, distract, and 
wholly change that great institution. They have risen and ex- 
pressed their will; the common schools of Cincinnati shall not be 



CoT)%mon Schools. IS 



Catholic, and they shall not be atheistic ; and now they calmly wait 
to see what servants of theirs are sufficiently courageous to defy 
their will. 

The State of Ohio has declared, in the same unmistakable lan- 
guage, through her whole history, the same momentous fact ; the 
State is not sectarian, the State is not atheistic, the State is founded 
upon and everywhere acknowledges the eternal and binding force 
of religion. Were it not so, Ohio would be the one solitary excep- 
tion to every commonwealth of ancient or modern times. Nobody 
denies that every state that existed before the American Republic 
was not only founded on religion, but supported some form of 
religion by law. No man acquainted with the history of the 
thirteen American colonies will deny that in every one of them 
religion was not only acknowledged and legally protected, but at 
some time a special form of religion was established. 

Anybody who can read knows that the men who issued our 
Declaration of Independence declared that "all men are created 
equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalien- 
able rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted 
among men." They appeal to the "Supreme Judge of the world," 
and "with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, 
they mutually pledge to each other their lives, their fortunes, and 
their sacred honor." The Continental Congress recognized the 
binding force of religion by electing chaplains, attending divine 
service in a body, purchasing and circulating the Bible and causing 
to be published the first edition of the Scriptures printed with 
American types, and enforcing religion in repeated resolutions and 
addresses. 

Standing on this rock of ages, Washington drew his sword as 
commander-in-chief of the patriot armies. His first order at Cam- 
bridge was a recognition of God and a command for divine wor- 
ship. In every colony during the Revolutionary war, religion was 
thus acknowledged. For our fathers had not arrived at that height 
of wisdom that they would essay to build a new nation without the 
help of Almighty God. 

The articles of confederation "implore the Great Governor of the 
world to incline the hearts of the legislatures we respectively repre- 
sent in Congress to approve of, and to authorize us to ratify the 
said articles of confederation and perpetual union." 

In the convention that formed our Constitution and created the 
Republic, Benjamin Franklin brought its quarrelsome delegates to 
their senses by moving the appointment of a chaplain in a speech 
that every American school-boy should learn by heart ; just as in 
1852, the House of Representatives at Washington paused in the 
strife of its election of speaker, and solemnly resolved, in view of 



1^ Religion iiv the 



the dangers besetting them, that every morning session should be 
opened with prayer. The Constitution of the United States is no 
atheistic document. It wisely leaves all legislation respecting the 
establishment of religion to the several States, and guarantees to 
the people the free exercise of religion itself, placing it alongside 
the sacred rights of freedom of speech and the press and the right 
of petition. 

It recognizes the memorable year of its own creation as "the 
year of our Lord." It imposes the solemnity of an oath upon 
every official of the Government. Washington declared that tlie 
new constitution was religious. When inaugurated as first presi- 
dent, lie kissed the Bible as he swore the oath, saying aloud, "so 
help me God ;" then walked with the whole assembly to church, 
where prayers were read; and then, in his inaugural address, said: 
"No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible 
hand which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of 
the United States -," and his Farewell Address contains a solemn 
adjuration to the people to "abide by religion and morality as the 
firmest props of the duties of men and citizens." 

Chief Justice Story, of the Supreme Court of the United States, 
in his Commentaries on the Constitution, declares that : " The 
attempt at the time of its formation to make it a matter of State 
policy to hold all religions in utter indifference, would have created 
universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation." 

Under a constitution and government thus consecrated by the 
acknowledgment of religion as the supreme law of human life, our 
national legislation has perpetually recognized this beneficent power. 
The first Congress, in the ordinance of 1787, to which the State of 
Ohio owes her existence, says : " Religion, morality, and knowledge, 
being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, 
schools and the means of education shall be encouraged ;" that every 
man shall be protected in the enjoyment of religious liberty, and 
there shall be no slavery in the great North-west. And on those 
conditions, for the support of an education based on religion and 
morality, the public lands were given, from which a portion of the 
school fund of Ohio is derived. 

Congress has always appointed congressional chaplains, and opened 
its halls for frequent religious services on Sunday. It appoints chap- 
lains for the army, and makes post-chaplains school-masters, and by 
the law of 1 861, selects them entirely from Christian ministers. 
Every one of the thousand glorious regiments that drove the slave 
power into the sea bore the flag and the Bible, and the minister of 
God shared in all its toils and dangers. The captain of every ship 
of war is compelled to hold divine service and exhort his men to 
attend. The military and the naval schools and the government 
hospitals are provided with religious instruction. A movement, in 



Common Schools. 15 



1853, in Congress, to abolish the office of chaplain on the ground 
of unconstitutionality, was rejected with overwhelming unanimity. 
Washington appointed Thanksgiving Day, and Lincoln, in the peri- 
lous times of war, summoned the people to fast and rejoice. The 
Government of the United States has alwavs acknowledged the 
authority of religion in all ways that would not trench upon the 
boundary lines of ecclesiastical and sectarian influence. It is 
neither ecclesiastical nor sectarian, nor atheistic, but it is religious. 

As if to confirm the signal wisdom of the fathers of the Amer- 
ican republic, the people of France were left to found their new 
commonwealth on the blasphemous denial of God and the contempt 
of religion. The blazing fires which consumed that short-lived 
structure shed a lurid light over the new American states. It was 
amid the fires of that European conflagration that their old consti- 
tutions were remodeled and new ones created. The atheism that 
held that torch was not without disciples among ourselves, while 
bigots of every sect clamored at the doors of the conventions for 
power. But the people, with that common sense which has been 
the guardian genius of America, struck the key-note of civil and 
religious liberty in every commonwealth ; — the State is not secta- 
rian ; the State is not atheistic ; the State is religious ; — and no 
State more decisively than Ohio has affirmed that mighty idea. 
The first words of the Constitution of Ohio — the corner-stone of 
her temple of liberty — are these solemn words : " We, the people of 
the State of Ohio, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, to 
secure its blessings and promote our common welfare, do establish 
this Constitution." The very freedom itself which the Constitu- 
tion is made to perpetuate is the gift of Almighty God. In section 
7 of the Bill of Rights it is solemnly declared, as a protection 
against atheistical intolerance, no less than religious persecution, 
that "all men have a natural and indefeasible right to worship 
Almighty God according to the dictates of their own conscience." 

At the close of the clause protecting the religious rights of the 
citizen, it is declared that "nothing herein shall be construed to 
dispense with oaths and affirmations." The State claims the right 
to put every citizen on his religious honor whenever he comes 
within her precincts. It affirms, in reiteration of the old language 
of the ordinance of 1787: "Religion, morality, and knowledge, 
however, being essential to good government, it shall be the duty 
of the General Assembly to pass suitable laws to protect every 
religious denomination in the peaceable enjoyment of its own mode 
of public worship, and to encourage schools and the means of 
instruction." Atheism says, knowledge alone is essential to good 
government; Ohio says, " religion, morality and knowledge." Athe- 
ism would only protect and encourage a godless school. Ohio pro- 
tects every religious denomination. Atheism finds indifference to 



16 Religion in the 



religion itself in the words : " No person shall be compelled to 
attend, erect, or support any place of worship against his consent; 
and no preference shall be given by law to any religious society, nor 
shall any interference with the rights of conscience be permitted. 
No religious test shall be required as a qualification for office, nor 
shall any person be incompetent to be a witness on account of his 
religious belief." Ohio qualifies these words by reserving the right 
to impose the oath, and places the word " however " in its declara- 
tion concerning religion and morality, as if to guard against this 
very misconception. The constitution provides that " no religious 
or other sect or sects shall ever have any exclusive right to or control 
of any part of the school-funds of this State." The Committee on 
Education, in the Convention of 1851, that framed our present con- 
stitution, on July 5, made a majority and minority report. In both 
those reports are found these words : " No religious sect or party shall 
ever have exclusive right to, or control of, any part of the common 
school-funds of this State." After deliberate reflection the conven- 
tion made a notable addition, and wrote, " No religious or other 
sect or sects." With prophetic wisdom these men saw that " other 
sects " would arise and claim the control of the people's schools. 
In this year of our Lord, both a religious and "another sect" have 
appeared at opposite doors of the council chamber in the City Hall, 
obstreperously commanding the Board of Education to let them 
in. The State of Ohio politely bows them down stairs, out of the 
front door into the street, saying : "Go about your own business ; 
the common schools of Cincinnati are neither sectarian nor atheistic, 
but they are, and shall be, religious." So does the great authority of 
the State acknowledge and perpetuate the supreme authority of 
Almighty God. 

The history of the common schools in the United States, is only 
a repetition of our civil history in this respect, with, perhaps, this 
exception : that in the education of their children the people have 
been slower to throw off the shackles of religious sectarianism 
than in their civil affairs. Every State now protects its school 
funds against the invasion of religious bigotry, in theory ; though 
in some localities Catholic and in others a Protestant sect is shrewd 
and powerful enough, occasionally, to evade the laws. Doubtless 
in strong sectarian communities the prevailing sentiment of the peo- 
ple overflows into the common schools, as into their domestic, indus- 
trial, and even political life. It is only by the gradual growth of 
true wisdom and pure religion among the people, that such abuses 
can be overcome. And in Ohio, at least, every person thus 
aggrieved has a remedy at law. 

In some communities, possibly in some of the States, the Bible 
is not generally read in schools. In Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, 
Indiana, Iowa, and West Virginia, it is a legal text-book. In 



Common Schools. 17 



Rhode Island, New York, Ohio, and other States, there is no law 
concerning any form of worship, and every community is left to its 
own discretion in the matter. It is doubtful if any teacher could 
be prevented by our rules from reading the Bible in a Cincin- 
nati school, whatever may the rights of the parents who object. 
But no State, to my knowledge, has ever forbidden religious 
instruction of an unsectarian character in its common schools, and 
the authors of the resolutions that propose to expel God Almighty 
from the schools of Cincinnati will certainly achieve the distinction 
of being pioneers in this radical reform. In the common school, 
as in every department of our civil life, the States of this Union 
unite in the declaration, — neither sectarian nor atheistic, but relig- 
ious. 

If any sectarian abuses have crept into the public schools of Cin- 
cinnati, if any of our teachers or trustees have so parted with their 
common sense as to enforce on the children of the people the creeds 
Qv ceremonies of any religious sect, it is easy to find out and correct 
the abuse. It is claimed that the morning devotional service, 
wherein the teacher reads a passage from the Scriptures without 
explanation, unites with the pupils in a religious song, and, in some 
cases, in a reading of the Lord's prayer, is a "Protestant Christian 
form of worship." I think a little observation will show that all 
public worship, in all ages and lands, consists greatly in repeating 
prayers, singing sacred songs, and reading sacred books. These are 
the universal elements of worship, differently blended, but always 
existing, and sectarian worship invariably consists in some departure 
from this form. 

I know that an Atheistic parent may claim that his rights are 
invaded by the invocation of God's name at all in the presence of 
his child. But Atheism, as such, has no rights under the constitu- 
tion of Ohio, as Catholicism has no such rights. The State declares 
that no man shall be deprived of his civil rights because of his 
Atheism, and there it leaves him. If, emboldened by this, he turns 
upon the State itself, tries to knock out its underpinning, to poison 
the very wells of its water of life, to obscure the very atmosphere, 
and darken the light by which it lives and breathes; if he pre- 
sumes, in short, to demand the expulsion of religion itself from the 
public institutions of Ohio, whether he be of foreign or native 
birth, a philosopher or a clown, he will ascertain that he has yet to 
learn the first principles of American civilization ; that this repub- 
lic is not an atheistic or socialistic Utopia, but is a practical govern- 
ment, made by practical men, who believe in Almighty God, who have 
the wisdom to maintain, and if need be, the strong arms to defend 
it. We sent five hundred thousand soldiers to heaven, and sunk 
uncounted millions of dollars in the sea, to defend American civili- 
zation from an aristocracy proclaiming the divine right of human 
2 



18 Religion in the 



slavery. And, if need be, we have a million more young men and 
the rest of our property to protect our civilization against that 
anarchy which begins with rebellion against Almighty God. 

But I ask in this connection, is all the right of such an aggrieved 
family lodged in the Atheistic father? Has a pious, Christian 
mother no rights in the education of her child ? Has the child 
itself no protection against the contagion of what Plato calls " the 
disease of the soul?" If an imperious father, under the inspira- 
tion of poor philosophy or poorer whiskev, forces his Atheism into 
his own family, deprives his wife and little ones of the right to read 
the Bible, scoffs at or ridicules all the sacred instincts and associa- 
tions of their life, and changes his home outwardly to a temple of 
ungodliness, that family has still one place of refuge ; the benignant 
State opens the doors of her countless school-houses, and places therein 
noble men and tender women to teach those little ones and instruct 
them in their duties to themselves, to man, and to God. That mother 
can " bear all things and endure all things," praying in secret, 
and hoping and living in the future of the little darlings at school. 
And now comes up the father and demands that the city of Cincin- 
nati shall become his accomplice in this bad enterprise of crushing 
out the religious life of his children. Excuse us, gentlemen. The 
city of Cincinnati is not above reproach \ she needs to mend many 
of her bad ways, and remove the stains of many an unsavory 
creek. But Cincinnati has not yet, thank God, fallen so low that 
she can help an Atheistic parent to put out the light of God in the 
soul of a little child. It has been said, with a sneer, that many of 
the names on these great petitions have been the names of women. 
And pray who should remonstrate against the expulsion of religion 
from the public schools if not the mothers and the sisters of these 
little ones ? Are gentlemen willing to leave this matter to the votes 
of the women of Cincinnati ? Would they leave it to the children 
and youth ? Atheism is generally a masculine disease, the last to 
assail even the most abandoned womanhood. We remember a 
wise old deacon, on a church council, where a brother pleaded an 
injured conscience in favor of some irreligious license, bringing the 
matter to a crisis by saying : " My brethren, we can't take down 
the whole side of this meeting-house to let one man come in." I 
don't believe the Queen City of the West, the first-born child of 
this new republic, will take her whole system of common schools 
in pieces to let a few Atheists indoctrinate the whole body of the 
people's children. To all such demands she will say: " My public 
schools are open to all wise and judicious reforms ; but to retreat 
upon Rome or fall back upon Tom Paine, is no reform, but a lapse 
into the deepest darkness of the past." 

The city of Cincinnati, in educational affairs, is a city set upon a 
hill which can not be hid. Thanks to the wisdom of a ^q-w devoted 



Common Schools. 19 



mefi, and the growing liberality of her people, she has an excellent 
and progressive system of public schools. That system is on the 
eve of great expansion, through its public library and its free univer- 
sity, and if no side wind blows it out of shape, it will rise into a 
structure in whose grand proportions we shall all rejoice. The 
Catholic priesthood are trying with desperate pertinacity to keep 
the Catholic children away from it. But the Catholic laity are 
learning their rights as American citizens, and men are growing up 
who will lead their offspring into our temple of knowledge. Napo- 
leon said, "When you would do a great thing, let alone the leaders 
and strike for the people." Let us hold no more conference with 
the Catholic clergy, but build our school-houses broad and high, 
make our schools the best in America — as soon as we are able 
make even school-books free,'and invite the children of all the peo- 
ple to come in. Cincinnati has no conference to hold and ho favors 
to ask of Atheism ; but every child of such parents she invites to 
come in and take the bread and water of life freely. Across the 
border half a score of great states and territories, where the com- 
mon school is just emerging into life, are watching the progress of 
our glorious temple of the instruction of the people. When those 
walls are set and that dome is spread, shall those commonwealths 
behold the stars and stripes flaunting to the breeze entwined with 
the black flag of Atheism ? Not so. We will finish our temple, 
make it large enough for all, and then we will raise our flag and 
nail it there ; that flag which our fathers raised ; that flag which 
their sons bore across a hundred bloody fields ; and every man shall 
know it means Liberty, Knowledge, Religion, now and forever- 
more. 



20 Religion in the 



THE CATHOLIC PRIESTHOOD AND THE 
COMMOI^ SCHOOL. 



On the 8th day of December, 1864, while a million patriot 
soldiers were forming the mighty line that swept the relics of the 
great rebellion of American despotism into the sea, Cardinal Anto- 
nelli, the soul of Pope Pius IX, sent forth a manifesto to the Cath- 
olic bishops of the whole world. This manifesto consisted of an 
"Encyclical Letter" and a "Syllabus of Modern Errors," and 
was a new platform for the Catholic priesthood, defining their rela- 
tions to modern society and the affairs of the nineteenth century. 
With the unerring eye of despotism the great central authority of 
the Roman Catholic church saw that a crisis was upon it. In the 
destruction of American slavery the bulwark of its political power 
in this republic was overthrown, and freedom, with all its blessings, 
would prevail over the land. Every European government would 
be changed by this momentous event, and make haste to throw off 
the yoke of priestly bondage so long and grievously borne. Italy 
had already gone down stream, and Austria and Spain were heaving 
with the premonitions of the earthquake which has shaken those 
old imperial allies of the church out of the steadfast position of 
centuries into the line of progressive nations. The political ascend- 
ancy of the Catholic priesthood was forever gone, and, like a pru- 
dent commander, the great Cardinal prepared to evacuate his outer 
works, and retreat within the second line of intrenchments. This 
was the exclusive educational control of all the Catholic children in the 
world. No longer could the church hope to control the educa- 
tion of the children of parents outside the church in any civilized 
country. Even with growing freedom of the press, liberty of 
speech, and cheap literature, there was imminent danger that its 
own fold would be invaded, and its own children learn that the 
priest is not the infallible representative of God on earth. To 
avert this calamity was the aim of this manifesto, the gist of which 
is found in sections 45, 46, 47, 48 and 22 of the Syllabus of Errors. 
These sections are the concentration of a good deal of equal im- 



CoTnmon Schools. 21 



port in the same document, and perfectly cover the position of 
those authorities on the question of education. Under the head 
of Modern Errors, the Pope enumerates the following : 

"45. The whole control of the public schools wherein the youth 
of any Christian State is educated, only the Episcopal seminaries 
being in some degree excepted, may and should be assigned to the 
civil authority, and so assigned to it that no right be recognized, in 
any other authority whatever, to interfere with the school disci- 
pline, the direction of studies, the conferring of degrees, the selec- 
tion or approbation of teachers. 

" 46. Nay, in the very seminaries for the education of the clergy 
the method of study to be adopted is subject to the civil authority. 

"47. The best constitution of civil society requires that the 
public schools, which are open to the children of all classes, and 
that public institutions universally, which are devoted to higher 
literary and scientific instruction, and to the education of youth, be 
released from all authority of the church, from her moderating 
influence and interference, and subjected wholly to the will of the 
civil and political authority (to be conducted) according to the 
pleasure of the rulers and the standard of the common opinions of 
the age. 

"48. That method of instructing youth can be approved by 
Catholic men, which is separated from the Catholic faith and from 
the power of the church, and which has regard exclusively, or at 
least principally, to a knowledge of natural things only, and to the 
ends of social life on earth." 

" 22. The obligation by which Catholic teachers and writers are 
absolutely bound is confined to those things alone which are pro- 
pounded by the infallible judgment of the church as dogmas of 
faith to be believed by all." 

This position covers the whole ground of education. From that 
day, in every part of the world, the Catholic bishops have moved 
on this line of operations. In Ireland the Primate of the Catholic 
church has commanded the people to leave the national schools, 
on pain of excommunication. The Pope himself has sent a loud- 
mouthed "bull" over the Alps, against the Austrian government, 
for granting to every church in Austria the right to educate its own 
children, with partial public aid. And now we are told the Empress 
Eugenie, the beloved defender of the church in France, has jour- 
neyed to the Orient, to present the educational question to the 
Eastern church. The infallibility of the Pope will be proclaimed ; 
all reluctant prelates and priests will be silenced, or put out, and 
the priesthood will become a unit all over the world, in drawing 
Catholic children out of the educational pandemonium of modern 
society into the ark of the Most High. 

On the heels of this manifesto the last great council of the 



^^ Religion i.n the 



Catholic church in the United States, held at Baltimore, Md., en- 
forced this duty, and the bishops were polarized on this question 
of the relation of the Catholic church to the American tystem of 
common schools. Up to this day the Catholic priesthood in the 
United States had been granted a long tether in this, difficult field 
of operations. It would seem that every bishop was permitted to 
manage educational affairs according to his own judgment, so that 
the result came out on the side of the church. Thus, in New 
England, where the general enlightenment had even reached 
the Catholic people, the priesthood saw that they could only 
go with the stream, and permitted the laity to educate their 
children in the admirable public schools, serving themselves on 
boards of education, and making little public opposition to the sys- 
tem. In New York, the headquarters of Catholic influence, 
political intrigue, and social aristocracy, their astute bishops played 
now upon one, now upon another party ; now sending and now 
withdrawing their children from public instruction; till, last winter, 
a bill was forced through the legislature of the State to give a pro- 
portion of the school moneys of the city of New York to private 
schools, under which they support sectarian Catholic education. 
In Cincinnati, for several years, the priesthood has been at open 
war with the national system, and has built up an elaborate system 
of parochial schools, supplemented by a high school and college, 
the latter under the control of the Jesuits. But now all differences 
of policy are subdued to the papal mandate. Everywhere in the 
United States the priesthood are moving to gather the Catholic 
children into sectarian Romish schools controlled by the church. 

But education is expensive, and such education as the American 
people are giving to their children in the common schools is beyond 
the power of any religious sect to maintain. Only the whole 
people can support popular schools as good as now are found in 
every large city and town of the northern states. The Catholic 
laity see that they are compelled, by this priestly programme, to 
pay for an inferior article of Catholic parochial education while 
their children are forbidden (by that priesthood alone) to go into 
the splendid temple of knowledge built by the money of the whole 
people. They are beginning to revolt. A portion have revolted, 
and send their children to the public schools, running the risk of 
the Archbishop's anathema. A much larger number are pushing 
toward the temple, clamoring for leave to come in. Able leaders 
of this class, especially among the Irish Catholics, are arising, who 
stoutly demand that the clergy shall grant some reprieve from this 
infallible rule that cripples their children in the race for knowledge, 
which, in America, is the race for success in life. The Catholic 
laity have furnished to the republic a roll of eminent men, and they 
are- asking the Catholic priesthood, like Father Hyacinthe, why 



Co77imoit Schools. 



their religion should separate them from the nineteenth century. 
The people grumble at the church-tax for parochial instruction, and 
are not, like Archbishop Purcell, perfectly satisfied with the schools 
themselves. To this demand the priesthood has presented its ulti- 
matum. Divide the public school money among the religious sects^ as 
in Canada and Justria, and other European States; at any rate., 
give us our proportion of the public money. On this condition they 
consent to call their Catholic parochial schools public schools, as 
they would be very willing to call their church the State church, 
and pay its expenses out of the public treasury. There is no 
instance in which the Catholic clergy now offers more than this : 
The State shall pay to support schools vjhich are under the control of the 
Catholic priesthood., on condition that those sectariari schools shall change 
their name to public schools. On this platform they stand, and 
besiege every legislature in the United States. Already is a vast 
system maturing to prevent the emancipated slaves from entering 
the new Southern public schools ; and, ere long, this educational 
war will break out over the border. If they can succeed in this 
they will still retain control of a great body of American citizens 
and perpetuate the power of the church. 

I make no charges against the Catholic priests as men. I would 
deprive them of no rights as American citizens. But the Catholic 
priesthood in the United States is a close religious corporation, 
under the control of an infallible foreign Pope, elected by a college 
of cardinals, not one of whom resides in the United States, a 
majority of whom are Italians. As a body, that priesthood has 
always been hostile to American ideas and institutions. If it could 
have had its way ten years ago, this republic would have been dis- 
membered. It wishes to gather all Catholic children into its 
exclusive fold, that it may form an ecclesiastical kingdom of God 
within the republic which can finally control it. It drives at the 
very heart of American life when it attempts to destroy our Amer- 
ican system of public instruction and hurl us back upon the ex- 
ploded European system of schools controlled by religious sects. 

This object it attempts to secure by two means: argument and 
policy. Of these the argument is the shadow, and the policy the 
substance. Despotism always tries to amuse and occupy the think- 
ing classes by subtle argumentation, while it drives on like fate to 
its inevitable end. The argument against the slave power closed 
fifty years ago, in 1 820, and all the reasoning after that time, by the 
slaveholders, was a cloud of mist sent out to conceal the machina- 
tions of its policy. The argument against sectarian education at 
pnblic expense was long since closed. The Catholic priesthood 
still fills the air with the shadowy ghosts of ideas long since buried, 
giving thereby employment to its dialectic skill, and concealing its 
covert approaches to the heart of the American school. 



^Jf. Religiojh in the 



The argument of the priesthood converges on one point. The 
Catholic citizens of the United States pay taxes to support the 
public school. That school, they sometimes say, is "atheistic;" 
sometimes declare "sectarian Protestant." according as the occasion 
demands. Within the last three months, Archbishop Purcell has 
made both declarations concerning the common schools. In either 
case it is obnoxious to the priesthood, whose ultimatum is Catholic 
religious education. It is an oppression to compel the Catholic 
citizen to pay for an institution his priest declares hostile to his 
religion. So it becomes a question of conscience. Observe, in 
this argument, the conscience of the priesthood is put forward as the 
conscience of the laity. The Catholic Irishmen of Boston, the most 
intelligent body of Irish citizens in the United States, have not 
found it contrary to conscience to send their children to the public 
school, where the Bible is read by legal command. Ten intelligent 
Catholic gentlemen sit in our board of education, some of them its 
most useful members, have sworn an oath to administer the sys- 
tem as now arranged, and do not look like men who expect to 
wake up any morning in purgatory. The fact is, the conscience here 
spoken of is the conscience of the Catholic priesthood as reconstructed by 
the manfesto of December 8, 1 864. 

Now, even if the common school were, as the priests assert, a 
Protestant sectarian institution, and if the American system of 
republican government made us a Protestant sectarian nation, there 
would be no oppression in the taxation by which the public system 
of schools is supported. For the common school is not a the;p- 
logical, or ecclesiastical, or primarily a religious, institution. It is 
not even primarily an educational institution. It is a politico-edu- 
cational institution, established primarily to qualify the American 
people to support American republican government. I have shown, 
on a former occasion, that our government and order of society 
recognize and are built upon religion as separated from its sectarian 
forms. The common school, as an American public institution, 
acknowledges the universal obligation to worship God, and do good 
to man, as the condition of republican life. But it is chiefly con- 
cerned to fit the people for American society, to become American 
citizens. It may be that education alone will not enable a people 
to obtain or preserve republican government, but it is certain no 
people destitute of education can obtain or preserve it. No great 
European nation can become a republic till its people are far more 
enlightened and accustomed to thought than now. Our slave 
States lost their liberties, and, for four years, were held up to a 
devastating war, by their aristocracy, because of the ignorance of 
their people. Without education the American people can neither 
vote right, nor preserve order, nor protect any part of their free 
nationality. So every State has now established the unsectarian 



Coimnojh Schools. ^o 



common school, as the corner stone of the nation, since it has been 
demonstrated that no system of sectarian, parochial schools can 
educate the mass of the people up to that point. 

Now, the Catholic citizen, like every citizen, shares in every 
public advantage of this intelligence of the people. As a Catholic, 
he is indebted to it. For why are all the legal and political disa- 
bilities that every Protestant nation in Europe imposes on Catholics 
here removed ? Why can a Catholic be President of the United 
States, and not the King of Great Britain ? Why are Catholics, 
as a sect, in no such danger from popular violence as in Great 
Britain ? Why has the Catholic child free access to all our schools, 
supported by public money ? Because America is a republic, and 
American citizens are educated in the common schools above 
European ideas of oppression. And now this priesthood turns and 
smites the very hand that guards the religious and civil liberties of 
its people, in a country where public opinion is against its religion, 
complaining that it is an unbearable oppression to pay the tax that 
educates the people to protect a government which guards itself 
from public harm. Besides, the Catholic tax-payer, like every other 
tax-payer who sends no child to school, receives a thousand fold the 
value of his tax, in general protection of person, property, rights, 
and the blessings of our national life. 

The common school is a vital part of our American system of 
government. It is religious in the same way, and no more Protest- 
ant than the United States and State governments, or American 
society in general. Why does not this priesthood demand that 
Catholic taxes should be used to support a government in every State, 
under the control of itself? The manifesto of 1864 asserts the 
infallible right of the church to unite with the civil government in 
ruling the people. Why does not the Archbishop of Cincinnati 
claim that the legislature of Ohio shall consult him in respect to 
legislation for Catholic citizens ? Why does not this priesthood 
withdravV from an order of society where free speech and press are 
the law of the land; where they can not amass and control such 
vast ecclesiastical properties as once in Mexico ; where they must 
be taxed to pay for Protestant chaplains in congress, army and navy, 
Protestant officials in prisons ; perhaps a Protestant sheriff to hang a 
Catholic murderer who has just been absolved by his priest.? Are 
Catholic politicians forbidden by their priests to hold office under 
this "godless" government? The logic of this demand for secta- 
rian education at public expense implies a separate government ; 
why not claim that ? The last Catholic general council at Balti- 
more does claim this for church property, prisons, and public insti- 
tutions, but we hear no noise about it in public. The fact is, the 
priesthood are aware it is a large enterprise to claim all this. They 
have seen what becomes of an aristocracy that claims to be exempt 



^6 Religion in the 



from our republican institutions, and they forbear. They know, 
moreover, that the educational field is the key of the whole posi- 
tion. Give up that, and all else follows of itself. IFe shall not 
give that up. 

But I deny that the common school is sectarian in any other 
sense than the government and society of the United States are 
sectarian. The people of the United States, first of all peoples, 
declared that there is a religion that is not a sect, or an establish- 
ment ; the worship of Almighty God, reverence for His law, and 
the service of man. From this universal religion, the absolute 
basis of all churches, creeds, and forms, the rights of man, and all 
the distinctive principles of American society are derived. This is 
the light, warmth, and atmosphere in which our republic lives and 
moves. As far as men can overcome the obstacles to the applica- 
tion of any great idea, they have applied this in every department 
of state and national life. But the Catholic priesthood has always 
resisted this American idea. It says there is but one religion, the 
Catholic, and every other form is false, and exposes men to damna- 
tion. It ridicules the pretensions of nine-tenths of the American 
people to be religious at all, and denounces the recognition and pro- 
tection of all denominations as religious bodies by the State. Of 
course, to such a view, our common schools are sectarian and 
atheistic at the same time, and will be so until they submit to the 
infallible dictation of an obscure Italian prince who claims to be the 
representative of Almighty God. Now, Americans are generous. 
If this poor prince has a hard run upon his treasury, we in Cincin- 
nati are willing to pass round the hat and send him $200,000 as a 
donation, though we don't believe in supporting a government by a 
subscription paper. But when this amiable old gentleman turns 
upon us, and claims infallible authority to control the education of 
American children, and demands the destruction of our common 
school, we respectfully decline. 

A portion of the Protestant clergy have always fallen into the 
same error, insisting that their own sectarianism is the whole of 
religion. But, while the priesthood is all-powerful in the Catholic, 
the people is supreme in the Protestant church. While the 
Catholic priesthood in America has followed the law of every aris- 
tocracy,-and now ultimates itself in Romish infallibility, the Protest- 
ant people have perpetually tended toward liberty, and forced their 
clergy to follow them. Thus, every year, the grand ideal of our 
fathers, of public religion divorced from sectarianism, has been 
more nearly approached. There never was so little sectarianism in 
public American affairs as to-day, and there will be less and less 
with every coming year, unless some great excitement, provoked by 
Catholic or Atheistic intolerance, forces a reaction in the public 
mind. The American people do not expect to please the Catholic 



Coinnhon Schools. 27 



priesthood in this matter, but they do intend to guard all the rights 
of Catholic, Hebrew, or Radical citizens as sacredly as the infirm- 
ity of human affairs will permit. The new leaders of Catholic 
religious reform in this country will learn in time that nothing is to 
be hoped from Rome, but everything is to be hoped from Wash- 
ington. Instead of chopping theological and political dialectics 
with the Jesuits, if they will turn to their own people, disabuse 
them of their prejudices against our common schools, show them 
the real catholicity of the system, and persuade them to accept such 
opportunities as the children of no generation have known before, 
they will become the real benefactors of our adopted population. 
The current of American civilization is tending irresistibly toward 
all the freedom humanity can endure. It will not plunge into the 
bottomless pit of Atheism to gratify any sect of philosophy. It 
will not turn back and drown the nation in a stagnant flood of des- 
potism, to please a visionary old gentleman at Rome. The people's 
answer to all this labyrinth of Jesuitic and atheistic argumentation 
on religion in the common schools is this : We have established 
the American common school as a vital part of our political 
institutions, the corner stone of our republican order of society. 
As a part of American society, it recognizes the claims, and lives 
in the atmosphere, of an unsectarian religion, and we intend neither 
to be quibbled nor forced away from this central fortress of our 
liberties. And the American people mean what they say, and have 
learned how to dispose of all enemies to the Republic who push 
their hostile theories into rebellious deeds. 

But the Catholic priesthood do not rely upon argument to destroy 
the common school. Their strong weapon is their policy, and that 
policy is the same as of all despotism since the foundation of the 
world : to divide, distract, and provoke bitter conflict between the 
friends of this institution until it is destroyed, or so damaged that 
they can come in and administer upon its remains. Liberty always 
has this disadvantage: it is always agitated, and liable to be 
divided by the freedom of speech, thought, and policy, among its 
friends, and can only enforce anything by the power of an over- 
whelming majority. Despotism moves like a fate, compact, deci- 
sive, ready to strike its foe when least prepared and least united. 
This policy the Catholic priesthood has always adopted in relation 
to the common school. That institution has grown up to its pres- 
ent magnificent estate in America through a cloud of controversy 
and compromise which ^qw of us can realize. Let any man spend 
three months in England, talking with all classes of English people 
on educational affairs, beholding what a stormy ocean of prejudice 
must be crossed before that nation can arrive at any practical sys- 
tem for educating its ignorant multitudes, and he will admire the 
wisdom and common Sjpnse that has carried us safe to our present 



28 Reli^ioTo in the 



glorious result. At every point in this creative enterprise the 
people have seen this black brigade of the Catholic priesthood, now 
striking an exposed point like a thunderbolt, now sWulking in a 
covert and hinting the mischief it dare not attempt. The only 
wonder is, that the people have kept their hands ofF an aristocracy 
that has pursued their favorite institution with such a tireless hate. 
But the people learn fast. An intelligent people, in the long run, is 
more than a match for any aristocracy, and in this case the machin- 
ations of the priesthood to destroy, divide and demoralize the com- 
mon school will come to naught. 

The history of our Cincinnati schools is full of warning on this 
point. The one constant fact through all our educational progress 
has been the attempt of the Catholic priesthood to capture the 
institution, or, in the event of failure, to destroy it. Up to the year 
1842, that priesthood hoped to gain control not only of the schools, 
but the city. Their success in making proselytes in a few wealthy and 
cultivated circles, and the general aristocratic state of society, were 
encouraging. They therefore kept their children in what they now 
call our sectarian and atheistic schools, hoping, like the slaveholders 
in national affairs, to finally subjugate and govern the whole. But 
for the last thirty years it has become more evident that Cincinnati 
is to become a great northern metropolis, in all respects conformed 
to American ideas, and the priesthood has acted accordingly. It 
has been engaged in two operations: First. It has persist-^ 
ently pushed the building of Catholic school-houses by funds in 
part extorted from the masses of the Catholic people. These 
buildings are commonly adjacent to their churches, a part of the 
sacred enclosure, and in no way adapted for our system of public 
schools. As fast as completed they have been filled with Catholic 
children, who are educated under the authority of the priests, the 
expenses being met by a weekly tax upon the Catholic people. 
They have just completed a great addition to the Jesuit college, 
which is heavily endowed, and intended to supplant our system of 
high schools and the McMicken university ; and they already own 
the Catholic Institute, which can easily be changed to a library and 
literary exchange of the town. It is probable that not fewer than 
fifteen thousand children are either taught in these buildings or kept 
away from the public schools by the influence of the priests. Sec- 
ond. During all this time there has been but little public agitation 
on the topic. The common schools have grown so fast and their 
friends have been so occupied in their development, especially since 
the war, have been so pressed to keep up with the demands of our 
increasing population, that little has been known or noticed of Cath- 
olic educational operations. But all these years this priesthood has 
been busy in sowing seeds of dissension and disaffection in every 
region of the city. It has toiled unceasingly among our wealthy 



Common Schools. 29 



people, persuading them to educate their daughters in the Catholic 
schools of Europe or their convents at home. It has destroyed the 
faith of many families in our high schools, and in every way sought 
to alienate the w^ealth and fashion of the city from this great popu- 
lar institution. It has seized upon a large class of cultivated indif- 
ferentists and imbued them at once with skepticism for American 
institutions and contempt for the people's education. It has 
worked with great success, and to-day one of our obstacles is 
a considerable body of elegant and wealthy people, who are either 
wholly ignorant of or bitterly prejudiced against our common 
schools. It has perpetually fomented political jealousy of this 
institution among our people of southern descent and Democratic 
proclivities, hoping to use this body of our fellow-citizens for the 
final dismemberment of the schools. It is on the watch perpetually 
to blow up an ignorant prejudice among the people against the 
administration of the system. Now the town is convulsed by 
charges of bribery and corruption in the Board, and it turns out the 
School Board has purchased an admirable lot for a school-house, 
adjoining a Catholic school, which spoils a nice little arrangement 
of its own to buy the land adjacent to our Hughes high school 
building. Again, the air is black with charges of the brutality of 
our teachers, and one would think a new slaughter of the innocents 
was inaugurated in these seminaries of godless learning. Again, 
the journals teem with general charges of sectarian bigotry, and we 
are charged with converting the school-room to a Protestant Chris- 
tian church. In the same breath the Archbishop and the Telegraph 
denounce the schools as atheistic and under the influence of such 
infidel parsons as the humble author of the present remarks. It is 
true these charges generally come from quarters outside the priest- 
hood ; it is well they should appear to express a growing dissatis- 
faction and disgust of the people with their schools. The old salts 
down on- Cape Ann say they can tell before they leave their bed on 
a Spring morning whether the wind is in the East ; for the East 
wind comes straight from the Newfoundland icebergs, and no man 
who has once felt its knife in his marrow can mistake that peculiar 
chill. Any observing man in Cincinnati knows when the educa- 
tional wind blows from the cathedral and the Jesuit's college, and 
pays little heed to the protestations of the parties who are invoked 
to pufF their cheeks in public and swell the dismal gale. 

And now the time has apparently come for a new public demon- 
stration to distract and demoralize the friends of public education in 
the city. It is well known that a considerable body of the Irish 
Catholic people are growing restless and dissatisfied with their 
church education, and desire to send their children to the public insti- 
tutions. Of themselves they would probably not object to the 
schools as they are ; but they dread a quarrel with the priesthood 



• Reli^ioTi in the. 



of their church. This constituency is represented in the School 
Board by perhaps a fourth of its members, who are at once Catho- 
lics, friends of the public schools, and greatly desirous of bringing 
these people in. On the other hand, there is a considerable body 
of people, chiefly of foreign birth and education, of extreme radical 
opinions on religious and social affairs. They are led, to a large 
extent, by expatriated European democrats and revolutionists. 
Some of them were reared in the Catholic church, and have sprung 
from her arms into a complete negation of religion itself. Most of 
them, in their rebound from European tyranny, have adopted opin- 
ions radically inconsistent with the religious and social ideas that 
underlie our American system of society. Hitherto they have acted 
with the party of freedom in polij:ics, were intensely patriotic during 
the war, and have been the firm friends and often the enlightened 
j-eformers of our public schools. The people, out of gratitude for 
their services, have given them an influence and position in the 
School Board altogether disproportioned to the relative popularity 
of their peculiar ideas, and up to this year they had taken no advan- 
tage of that confidence to make any public demonstration against 
the prevailing convictions of the community. The Hebrews, too, 
are in the schools in force, among their most enlightened and hearty 
supporters. 

Now here is just the field in which the priesthood loves to ope- 
rate. An accidental result of the elections has thrown into the 
Board perhaps twenty-five members who are not Protestant Chris- 
tians, though friends of the public schools. The thing to be done 
was to combine this accidental majoritv for some assault upon the 
harmony of public education which should arouse Protestant bigotry 
and Atheistic intolerance and Hebrew prejudice, and set the friends 
of the public schools in Cincinnati generally by the ears. Such a 
happy state of affairs could not fail to disgust the community, dam- 
age the schools and pave the way for a division of the school money 
among the different religious sects. A plan was conceived with 
such admirable skill and so adroitly set in motion that in a less intel- 
ligent community than Cincinnati it might have succeeded. Mys- 
terious hints went forth from the Bishop's palace that some amicable 
adjustment of the old difference in these rival educational systems 
might now be hoped, and the representatives of the reforming 
Catholics in the Board were urged to bring their brethren to a 
private interview with certain ecclesiastical parties. The meet- 
ing was held and the outlines of a plan of union proposed. The 
heart of the matter was in two propositions : First, the School 
Board should hire the Catholic school-houses and bring the Catho- 
lic schools within the control of the public system. So far the 
thing looked well. We need, alreadv, several new school-houses. 
We can not afford to build, and certainlv the Catholic school-houses 



Coimnon Schools. 31 



must be had to accommodate the Catholic children. Second., There 
shall be no religious teaching in any of the public schools, Catholic 
or public. All shall be swept clean of an)' "taint," not only of "the- 
ology," but of religion itself. This of course was grateful to the 
radical members and their constituents, and would not offend the 
great mass of careless and indifferent people who don't care whether 
the Bible or anv religion is found in the school-room. Even relig- 
ious people might question whether it were not well to waive the 
matter of Biblical reading or religious instruction, provided so great 
an object as the union of all the schools could be accomplished. 
But now comes in a little proposition which, like a lady's postcript, 
contains the soul of the plan : that our old friends and admirers., the 
Catholic priesthood., should have the exclusive use of these Catholic school- 
houses for two days in the week for religious purposes. That, of course, 
meant that on those days the same scholars and the same teachers 
would have been gathered in the same school-houses for Catholic 
religious instruction ; in short, instead of teaching Catholicism every 
day in the week, secular knowledge was' to be imparted on five 
days, and all the power of the church summoned for the two remain- 
ing days to the work of saving the children's souls according to the 
method of the priesthood. Observe that on those two days the public 
school-houses are closed hy rule of the Board, and their use for any outside 
purpose strictly forbidden. The radical members, with a strange lack 
of their usual penetration, fell into this plan and agreed to advocate a 
proposition to banish all religion except the Catholic from the pub- 
lic schools, placing in the hands of the priesthood the only right to 
enter a public school-house as religious teachers. It was a magyiifi- 
cently contrived scheme for planting a Catholic mission in the very heart 
of the public schools of Cincinnati, and the School Board almost laid 
down its arms and surrendered at discretion. 

But the plan got out and the people saw its practical meaning. 
In one day after publication this wretched compromise was blasted 
by popular indignation. The next step of the priesthood was to 
retreat in good order. The Archbishop proposed a conference with 
a committee of the Board, to discuss the whole matter, and it was 
granted. Here no longer appeared the smiling, compromising face 
of the Jesuit, but a stern and insolent prelate, denouncing the whole 
common school system, and holding up the Papal syllabus as the 
ultimatum. Under cover of the utter astonishment of the two 
parties so cleverly drawn into this position, the Bishop and his clergy 
retreated in excellent order and no longer appear on the horizon, 
doubtless having retired to the cloister for meditation and prayer. 
But one party was left among the wounded to the tender mercies 
of the victorious people, and that party was the Catholic reformers 
in the School Board. Having used these gentlemen to the utmost, 



Religion in the 



the ecclesiastical batteries are now opened upon them and they are 
threatened with the shadov/ of things to come. 

Now comes the fifth act of the drama. The priesthood has 
withdrawn with lofty scorn, leaving the Board distracted and embit- 
tered by an angry discussion on the only question that can divide the 
friends of the public schools, religious instruction and reading the 
Bible in the school-room. Calvinist and Atheist, Reformed Hebrew 
and Reformed Catholic, Ritualist and Liberalist, and Radical, are 
set in motion outside, and the result is a new religious agitation 
covering the whole ground of public instruction. This is the very 
harvest of the priesthood. While the friends of the common 
school are tearing each other in pieces, and a radical measure, pro- 
posing to sweep religion out of the school, is held in terror over the 
Board; this holy corporation, in its retirement, can watch the strife 
and strike as judgment may direct, fondly hoping that some wild 
and rash measure will be forced through the Board, which will per- 
petuate the conflict until the people, wearied and disgusted, destroy 
or cripple their darling institution, and support Catholic education 
with public funds. 

I do not believe this last plot of the priesthood will succeed. I 
am not in the secrets of the Reformed Catholic or the radical mem- 
bers of the Board, who are expected to combine and pull the Arch- 
bishop's chestnuts out of the fire. But I am inclined to think my 
Catholic colleagues will decline to be used for such a purpose, even 
at the risk of the displeasure of their priesthood. They are Amer- 
ican citizens and know that only in American institutions is their 
hope for liberty and the true success of their people in American 
life. Sooner or later they must fight this battle for the emancipa- 
tion of education from priestly control, as our fathers fought it in 
America a century ago. If they do not see this now, it will be 
seen ere long. The only hope of the Catholic people in this 
country is in clinging fast to American institutions. There stands 
the Pope's syllabus, and tiiere stands the people's school, and finally 
they must go altogether to one or the other. The syllabus means 
the despotism they left Europe to escape j the common school 
means the freedom they came to the new world to find. 

The people are watching the radical members of the Board with 
an anxiety not unmixed with humor. Will they, after all their suf- 
ferings and protestations, and lifelong hostility against the Catholic 
priesthood, now turn and do the very thing the priests ardentlv 
desire.? Are they so wedded to their peculiar religious theories 
that they will break forever with the mighty Protestant Christian 
people of this republic, with whom they have so long and harmo- 
niously labored ? Are they ready to alienate every Protestant Chris- 
tian church in this city from the public school by spurning the Bible 
from its threshhold, at the dictation of the deadliest enemy of pop- 



Common Schools. 33 



ular education ? There may be men so wedded to their theories, 
so contemptuous of religion, so ignorant of the great American 
heart, so reckless in policy, that only an earthquake under their 
feet can bring them to their senses ; but I do not believe our old 
friends and colleagues are disposed to commit suicide in this public 
manner. The people perfectly understand another mischievous 
class of men, who have gone into this agitation with no principle, 
and would set the common school on fire for the new sensation of 
watching the blaze. 

The argument is nearly closed, and the people's mind is made up. 
If this thing is done, there is a day after to-morrow, and a long day 
after that. If the Board of Education is wise, it will throw this 
firebrand out the window, defer all discussion on the proper method 
of reading the Bible or giving religious instruction to a calmer 
future ; forgive and forget its little rivalries and differences, and, 
like a band of brothers, unite to build up the common school ; wish- 
ing the good Archbishop meanwhile a safe and happy journey to his 
beloved Rome. 



SJi- Religion in the 



THE BIBLE I¥ THE COMMOl^ SCHOOL. 



When Charles McMicken made his splendid bequest of a million 
dollars to the city of Cincinnati, to establish a free college for boys 
and girls, he coupled it in his will with the stipulation that while no 
denominational theology should be taught, the Holy Bible, in the 
Protestant version, should be a text book in the McMicken univer- 
sity. We may believe that a man so eminently practical had the best 
reasons for such an act. Mr. McMicken came to Cincinnati a pen- 
niless youth ; he spent his life in the South-west, his business transac- 
tions ranging over the whole region between New Orleans and the 
city of his adoption. He knew every variety of human life in the 
valley of the Mississippi, and understood the strange and incoherent 
materials out of which our new civilization is emerging. He had 
seen the gambler plying his trade on the river steamer, the slave 
auctioneer knocking off his human merchandise. He knew how 
hard it is for men to be honest, and pure, and truthful, and patriotic 
in such a country. He saw how soon the mass of mankind forget 
the religion of their youth when thrown without restraint into 
such a state of society. He saw, on one hand, the tremendous 
power of the Romish priesthood, entrenched at the mouth of the 
Mississippi, slowly pushing up the valley. He saw the blasphemous 
irreligion and polished Atheism that were even then eating their way 
into the souls of western young men. He doubtless supposed that 
his magnificent bequest would establish here the great university 
west of the mountains, and over that university he would raise the 
old Bible banner, the symbol and assurance of victory in every 
great conflict for civil and religious liberty in modern times. After 
years of litigation, enough of that great donation has been preserved 
to found in Cincinnati a free university, reverent of religion, cher- 
ishing the Bible in its heart. If the enemies of the Book now 
succeed in expelling it from the common school, the next assault 
will be made on our high schools and free university and public 
library, until within the entire inclosure of our great system of 
public education, that Book which the modern world has always 
proclaimed the best, will be the one which can not show its head. 

The people who settled this western world, and planted the 
republican institutions under which we live, brought with them 
from the East that great university, the American common school, 
divested of sectarian and ecclesiastical influence, but planted on the 



Coimnon Schools. S5 



religion of the modern civilized world as proclaimed in the Bible. 
The Puritans from New England, the Presbyterians of New Jer- 
sey, the men who left the South to escape the threatened tempest 
of a slave rebellion, the German Lutherans of Pennsylvania, the 
Churchmen and the liberal Calvinists of New York, were all 
united in this: that the Bible should be a text book in the western 
common school. Wherever that American principle has controlled 
a western community, the Bible flag has waved over the common 
school-house. Wherever the Catholic priesthood and the Atheists 
and religious indifFerentists of any community have been strong 
enough, they have united, as now in Cincinnati, to banish the Bible 
from the schools. And, universally, the parties to this compact 
have been chiefly of foreign birth and education ; members of a 
priesthood that looks to Rome for its instructions, or adopted citi- 
zens who, in their recoil from the despotism of a State church in 
Europe, have repudiated religion, and adopted the astounding 
watchword that Republicanism and Atheism are convertible terms. 
For the number of people born and educated in the United States, 
who have adopted these views, is so small as to attract no notice, 
being confined chiefly to people who constitutionally take the 
opposite side in any public controversy, and politicians anxious to 
get ofiice and untroubled by religious principles. As in Cincinnati 
now, so everywhere in those States which have established the 
common school, the vast majority of the people who best under- 
stand and are the reliable support of American institutions, are 
determined that the Bible shall not be expelled from the public 
school. And the great battle which is to wage through every 
western state around this point, is a conflict between those who 
believe religion is the foundation of the American republic, without 
which it will go the way of all the republics of old, and those who 
believe the American people can do without religion in the most 
momentous relations of their life, the relation of citizens of their 
country. The former party raise the Bible as their standard; the 
latter is in the condition of the Southern confederacy before it had 
made its flag. 

This portion of the western people believes the great West is 
not great enough to get on without the religion of love to God and 
love to man. It is willing to grant everything that may be claimed 
for the material and political destiny of these new commonwealths. 
Let Chicago become the metropolis of the solar system if she will. 
Let Cincinnati be not only "Queen of the West," but queen of 
"all outdoors," if she can. Let the dreams of the Louisville 
Convention be magnified ad infinitum. Let even Alaska outshine 
the roseate visions of the great statesman-prophet of our Pacific 
empire. Let Europe be inclined at an angle that will precipitate 
fifty millions of her people qn the Atlantic coast, and John China- 



S6 Religion in the 



man darken the ocean by his- illimitable oncoming. Let every 
merchant be a millionaire, and every politician a senator, and every 
young lady a governor's vi^ife. Come what will in that line, this 
portion of our people says: The almighty West can never outgrow 
the Almighty God, and never become so powerful that it can safely 
despise the least precept of God's almighty law. They intend to 
teach that fact to their children and their children's children to the 
remotest generation. They see that the children of the West live 
their most vital life in the common school. There is the univer- 
sity that trains them for American affairs ; fixes their language, 
their modes of thought, their ideals of life. Multitudes of western 
parents have no time for any instruction of their children. Other 
multitudes are utterly unfitted by character to teach them what is 
true and good. The sectarian cliurches, by their denominational 
bigotry and bitter contentions, repel myriads of the old and young 
from the Sunday worship of God, and too often furnish the strong- 
est argument to the atheist and the scoffer. This portion of our 
people does not believe in the specious doctrine of the Catholic 
Telegraphy that a parent has the sole right to decree whether his 
child shall come up fit or unfit to be an American citizen. They 
have not that abounding faith their opponents seem to have in the 
power of sectarian Sunday schools to insure public morality. They 
want every possible assurance that the youth of the West shall be 
brought under the influence of that "religion, morality, and educa- 
tion," which the constitution of Ohio declares "essential to good 
government." So the Western people of American birth and 
habits of thought believe that unsectarian religion should be recog- 
nized where childhood lives its most vital life — in the very heart of 
the children's republic, in the Western common school. 

Now, why do the Western people select the Bible as the one 
book to represent religion in their common school ? 

First. Because the Bible contains the simplest, strongest, and a 
universally acknowledged statement of this absolute religion of love 
to God and man, which has been the ideal of every modern state 
and the creative principle of modern civilization. The Bible is the 
summit of human literature. It contains the noblest philosophy 
ever yet proclaimed to man. It inculcates the loftiest piety and 
the most rational and practical morality of all religious books. It 
exhibits the most exalted types of character that have appeared in 
earthly affairs. It gives the best account yet given of the highest 
relations and duties of man in time and eternity. The whole 
Christian Church, which practically means the modern world, in a 
thousand ways, has adopted it as its final rule of life. Every 
modern government has declared that it contains the divine law 
from which all authority on earth is derived. What book so fit, 
then, to be placed in the common school of this new land as that 



Common Schools. S7 



which has come down to us indorsed by the reverence of all the 
generations of modern times ? In this new land where almost 
everything is adrift, around what banner shall we rally our youth if 
not around the Holy Bible, which represents to us that one thing 
in man^ which can never change, that immutable center of his 
eternal life, the religion of love to God and love to man ? 

If we put out the Bible as the standard of public religion, what 
shall we put in ? What other book, what collection of religious 
and moral precepts culled from all the literatures of antiquity, can 
rival the Hebrew Scriptures in that loftiness and grandeur which 
are the majestic simplicity of everlasting truth ? Gather into one 
volume all that has been said by all the philosophers and founders 
of religion of the ancient world, and any one of a dozen of those 
old Hebrew psalms is worth them all. Is there any better code of 
morals than the Ten Commandments ; any sweeter religious stories 
than a score of those old Hebrew tales ; any practical wisdom sur- 
passing the Proverbs of Solomon ; any prophetic enthusiasm for 
man beyond the visions of Isaiah ? Ransack all modern literature 
which has grown up under the inspiration of the New Testament, 
is there a better guide for Western American life than the Sermon 
on the Mount and the Lord's Prayer? Shall we banish all relig- 
ious books, and leave instruction in religion and morality entirely 
to our teachers ? How long before that system would bring in 
the creed and ceremonies of every church to wage their destruc- 
tive war in the community of the children ? We place the Bible 
in the school without note, comment, or explanation, because 
no book or teacher so well enforces the universal religion of love. 
When a child looks at the sun, it is not needful to say, there is 
the light. When a child reads the Ten Commandments and the 
Sermon on the Mount, repeats the Lord's Prayer and beholds the 
character of Jesus, he does not laeed to be told ; there is religion 
and morality at their fountain head. 

It is false to assert that the Bible is read in the common school 
on account of any theological opinion or theory concerning its in- 
spiration. The Catholic and the Hebrew, the Protestant Evangel- 
ical, and the Protestant Liberal, the Deist and the Skeptic, all have 
their own theories concerning the different degrees of inspiration of 
different portions of the Bible ; indeed, differ essentially as to the 
meaning of inspiration itself; but they all agree with the greatest 
men of modern times in declaring that the Holy Bible contains the 
best religion and morality and the loftiest types of human character 
accessible to mankind. The Bible is holy, not because of any of 
our theories of inspiration, but because, as a fact confessed by all 
competent witnesses, it contains the holiest rule and example tor 
human life. Nobody pretends to deny this fact except an out-and- 
out Atheist, or a man who repudiates religion and morality itself. 



38 jReligion in the 



The enemies of the Bible in the school will not be permitted to 
burden the good book with the theories of any religious or irrelig- 
ious sect about its inspiration. The American people don't adopt 
things on the strength of theories ; they adopt everything on its 
own actual merits. They believe in the Bible because it is the 
best guide to morals and religion, as they support the common 
school because it is the best way to educate the mass of American 
youth. If the eminent gentlemen who discoursed against the Bible 
in the school-room, at Pike's Hall last evening, will bring forth a 
better book for the instruction of the youth of Cincinnati, in relig- 
ion and morals, than the Bible, we will adopt it ; and we would 
suggest that their eminent scholarship might better be employed 
in producing that new Bible than in persuading the people to throw 
aside the holiest book in all the world. 

But the Bible contains a great deal that children can not under- 
stand without explanation. It contains much that is improper for 
little children to read, or even to know. Great scholars are divided 
respecting the interpretation of much contained therein. There is 
a good deal of mythical history, primeval science, not to say bar- 
barous morality between those covers. So say the opponents of 
the Bible in the public school. Well, what then ? The Bible, 
then, is like everything else in this world. It has its weak places 
and human limitations. You do not deny it contains the loftiest 
religion and morality in the simplest form, best adapted to the in- 
struction of the child ; but you say that it contains, along with this, 
a great deal that is not the highest, and you object to placing it as 
a whole before the children in the school. If you had anything 
else in the common school that was unmixed good ; if there were 
any thing in this city not mixed all through and through with 
human imperfections ; if you, yourselves, were infallibly wise and 
righteous, that might be a reason why we should expel the Bible 
because it is not altogether suitable for little children to read. You 
reject the Bible, which undeniably contains the highest and best 
things in the world, and leave the children to other moral and 
religious influences, of lower value, equally or more fatally mixed 
with the leaven of impropriety. Any system of philosophy, any 
theory of geology, history, language, you teach in school is involved 
in as much error and uncertainty as hangs about any portion of the 
Bible. You don't wait till all the vital questions connected with 
science are settled, until you teach it. You say certain great facts 
are established, are " positive truth," and you teach science for-the 
sake of that established truth. You don't pretend that your 
teachers are perfect men and women, either in their scholarship, 
their manhood or womanhood. You select the best you can obtain 



Common Schools. 39 



and say your children must run the ordinary risks of Hfe. You 
send your children to school, in many parts of our city, through- 
streets where they see in a month more debauchery and diabolism 
than are described by old Solomon. Your newspapers teem with 
revelations as disgusting as those denounced by Paul in the cities of 
the Roman empire. Even your churches are half human, as you 
all have had occasion to confess. Why do you keep your children 
in this city life at all, with all these elements of perversion around 
them .? Because the city contains the best as well as the worst 
things in human society. The good is stronger in the city than in 
the country as well as the bad. You reason wisely that the true way 
to teach wisdom and virtue to youth is to place them in contact 
with the most inspiring and powerful influences for wisdom and 
virtue and trust they will learn to reject what is foolish and bad. • 
Now, why not act thus reasonably in this matter of the Bible in 
the schools ? Place your children in contact with its unrivaled 
precepts of virtue and wisdom and its inspiring ideals of character 
and trust them to be instructed thereby. If a boy or girl fully 
takes in the ten commandments and the beatitudes, is there any 
great danger of falling into the vices of Absalom or becoming a 
modern Jezebel 1 If your child learns to love its enemies and 
pray the last prayer on the cross, can't you trust it to avoid the 
weaknesses of the old Hebrew kings }. If he hears the Lord's 
prayer always ringing through his soul and beholds the golden rule 
of love shining like the sun along his path, will he be apt to lose 
his way amid the logic of Paul, in the maze of the Jewish law, in 
the mystic labyrinth of the prophecies, or the cloudy grandeurs of , 
the Apocalypse ? You must trust a little to human nature here as 
everywhere in life. 

The plain fact about this Bible reading, which is persistently kept 
out of sight by its enemies, is this : The Bible reading in the Cincin- 
nati common school consists of the reading of short selections for 
a few minutes, by the teachers at the opening of school in the 
morning J the repetition, in some schools, of the Lord's prayer, and 
the quotation of a i^-w of its best known chapters in the school 
reading books. The passages read or recited by the children are, 
with hardly an exception, those which would be selected by the 
most judicious committee which should attempt to make a Bible 
manual for the use of scholars. The simplest passages of the Old 
and New Testament ; those that are known and can be repeated by 
almost every child in school; those that have passed into all modern 
literature and become domesticated, even in the newspaper, are 
those the children hear. No teacher would be sustained a moment 
who should depart essentially from this method of reading the Bible 
in the school. Our teachers are neither fools nor bigots ; they 
understand better than any other class of people those portions of 



^0 Religion in the 



Scripture best adapted for the use of childhood ; and those they 
read, I believe there is nothing in the Bible which, if properly 
understood, is unprofitable for even childhood to know. But I, 
with every friend of the Bible in the schools, understand that we 
must deal with that book just as we deal with everything in life ; 
take therefrom what is best adapted to childhood, without explana- 
tion, and leave the rest to maturer years and other methods of in- 
struction, I went, in Europe, to see Mont Blanc ; not because it 
was in all respects more interesting than other mountains, but be- 
cause I wished to see the physical summit of Europe, There was 
a good deal in the Mont Blanc range that I should not have ridden 
twelve hours astride a lazy mule to behold ; a great deal of ragged, 
obscure, dangerous, repulsive scenery. There were fifty exquisite 
mountain pinnacles bristling about the vale of Chamouni more 
attractive at first glance, apparently higher than it. But up there, 
thirty miles off, lay that modest dome of snow, first kindled by the 
morning light, the last illumined by the glory of the dying day. It 
was the top of Europe that I spent that toilsome week to see. I 
stand by the Bible in the school because I want the children of 
America to always have in sight the summit of the wisdom, the 
morality, and the religion of mankind. I have no idea they will 
understand it all ; many of them will hardly look that way. But 
I would keep that summit exalted above all the generations of 
childhood, believing that no little one is so utterly gone in heedless- 
ness, or stupidity, or naughtiness, that some time in its school life it 
will not look upward to that mountain summit of thought flaming 
with a radiance from higher worlds ; that summit Vi'here man is 
transfigured and becomes indeed divine. 

Second. The American people have placed the Bible in the school- 
room because that book has become the type of civil and religious 
liberty in modern times. Its scholastic and literary opponents con- 
stantly fall into the pedantry of discussing the question as a matter 
of literary or educational criticism. But the religious people of 
this republic regard it in quite another light. For the last three 
hundred years the Bible has been to the cause of civil and religious 
liberty in the modern world exactly what the stars and stripes have 
always been to the American Union. It is still, by common con- 
sent, the banner around which in every nation the masses rally to 
resist the encroachments of imperial, aristocratic, or ecclesiastical 
despotism. It remains to-day in America the symbol of all we 
hold most dear. 

One evening I found my little boy reading the Bible to the Cath- 
olic servant girl in the kitchen. She insisted that he should read 
the book of Revelations, and she sat listening with her whole soul 
to the gorgeous rhetoric of that wondrous book. " Why don't you 



Coimnon Schools. 4^ 



read something you can understand in the Bible ?" said I. " O, 
this is what I want, this tells about God that sits on a great white 
throne, up in the sky. and He is greater than all the priests, greater 
than the archbishop, greater than the queen of England ; yes," said 
she, starting up, "greater than the great Pope himself. Now I 
know why the priests don't want us to read the Bible, but I'll read 
it as long as I live." There was more philosophy in that poor 
girl's enthusiasm, than in all the speeches of the learned men last 
night at Pike's Hall. That poor ignorant Irish girl at one glance 
saw into the heart of the matter. Put yourself back into the 
European world of four hundred years ago. The people are locked 
up in a prison-house, double bolted by the Church and the State. 
The Church and the State are practically one, sometimes at odds 
with each other, but always uniting against the people. There is a 
dim notion abroad that there is a Holy Book which teaches that 
man is the child of God; that all men are brethren; that the 
greatest should be the servant of all ; that the Almighty Father 
does justice among the nations, overturns kings, destroys priest- 
hoods, sweeps wicked nations from the face of the earth ; that no 
being on earth has the right to do as he will unless he does the will 
of God ; that religion does not mean the pope and the cathedrals 
and the awful ceremonies therein, but love to God and man ; that 
Jesus came to break every yoke, and all who do justly, love mercy, 
and walk humbly with God, like Him, are sons of the Father in 
Heaven ; that He came to proclaim a glorious liberty throughout 
the world, to declare peace on earth and good will to men. But 
the great book that holds all these precious things, is shut up in a 
dead language that the people can not read, kept by the priesthood 
under lock and key, and only doled out as it may be perverted to 
sustain their tyranny. For there was a time when it was not held 
a " tyrannical" exercise of power to read the Bible to the people. The 
tyrants have always been the men who would forbid the opening 
the seals of that great book. 

Who wonders that the people of Europe came to regard the Holy 
Bible as the charter of all their rights, their standard in the great 
war for freedom ? Who wonders that the translation of the Bible 
by Martin Luther not only broke the chains of German despotism, 
but created a new language for the people? The people of Hol- 
land fought half a century, Germany fought a hundred years for 
the privilege of reading the Bible. Old England waded through 
seas of blood to place a Bible in the hands of every Englishman, 
and the translation of the Bible we now read is not only the grand- 
est monument of our language, but is the triumphal monument of 
the liberty of the Anglo-Saxon race, inscribed with the names of 
heroes and martyrs, hung with victors' wreaths, stained with the 



Jf.^2 Religion in the 



blood of the grandest people that ever lived. Think of Old Scotia 
fighting tyrants out and fighting the Bible in through generations 
of prayers, and bloody sweat and appalling toil. The men w^ho 
fled across the ocean to found this new republic, brought the Bible 
as the "man of their counsel." They read and pondered it till 
they found death to all the people's foes therein. What wonder 
that every great man of the Revolution held the Bible close to his 
heart through all that gloomy strife. When Washington, the first 
Father of his Country, was inaugurated first President of the United 
States, he swore the great oath and kissed the Bible in the sight of 
the reverent multitude. Two years ago, in Louisville, I called 
upon one of the noblest old women in America, one of the last 
relics of that grand old Virginia stock from which sprung the men 
the country can never forget. She led me in silence to a beautiful 
photograph of our martyr President, the second Father of his 
Country. It had been sent to her when the proclamation of 
emancipation was issued, and under it was written : " In grateful 
memory of the gift of an Oxford Bible, in my youth, from your 
pious hands. Abraham Lincoln." So it has been, so it is, so 
will it be. You may pile up your mountain of new commentaries 
on the old book till it reaches the skies. Learned pundits may 
wander off into the shadow land of high German criticism until 
the fog shuts out the earth and the heavens. Learned lawyers 
may quibble to-day, as they quibbled three centuries ago, against 
the legality of reading the book. Solemn priests may demand that 
the Bible shall be locked up in the cathedral chancel in Cincinnati, 
as in the days when men went to the stake to testify their love for 
its words of truth. Atheism may rave against it in Ohio as when 
in Paris it wrote over the gate of the cemetery: "Death is an 
eternal sleep." But the American people, who know what this 
republic means, have received that blood-stained banner, passed 
onward to them down the generations, across the ocean ; have borne 
it from Plymouth rock to the snows of Alaska, have fought a 
thousand battles in its name, have broken the chains of a down- 
trodden race, have proclaimed in every way that men can testify 
that the Bible is the great charter of their liberties, by which they 
will abide in the generations to come. 

And now comes up a party and demands of the people of this 
city that they shall pull down this old standard of freedom from the 
common school, degrade it in the eyes of every child, and throw it 
away as old rubbish in the garret of the past. Who vv'ants to pull 
down this banner of civil and religious liberty? The Catholic 
priesthood wants to pull it down. This subtle and consolidated 
power in our midst is a unit on this. It is the silent power that 
stands behind this noisy proclamation against the word of God. 
Is any body surprised at this? Did the Catholic priesthood ever 



Common Schools. Jf^ 



in this world raise the flag of civil and religious liberty? Is not 
every government in Europe to-day holding that priesthood by the 
throat, at arm's length, and does it not protest against every expan- 
sion of the people's rights? Turn to the papal syllabus of 1864, 
and read the words of the Pope in regard to civil and religious 
liberty. Fie says it is an error "that the Church ought to be 
separated from the State, and the State from the Church." He 
says: "The Catholic religion shall be the only religion of the State 
to the exclusion of all others" He says : " It is an error that the 
Roman Pontiff can and ought to reconcile and harmonize him,self 
with progress, with liberalism, and with modern civilization." Do 
you wonder that the Catholic priesthood of Cincinnati and their 
archbishop, who has gone to Rome to proclaim that Pope infallible, 
want to tear down this old flag from the roof of the common 
school? Of course that priesthood is conscientiously opposed to a 
Bible which teaches the people that they are not the masters, but 
the servants of mankind. Of course they have conscientious 
objections to paying taxes to support civil and religious liberty. 
Did the Catholic priesthood ever find its conscience on the side of 
the people ? Ten years ago, the mass of the clergy and laity of 
half the Union had a conscientious objection to the American flag. 
Did we pull down the old stars and stripes to ease that conscience? 
We lifted the great banner up and held it there, till it was seen by 
all the people's enemies all over the world. Do we now propose 
to pull down the old gospel banner to relieve the conscience of a 
religious caste that has deluged Europe with blood, and burnt it 
with fire, and fought liberty with all its might for a thousand years? 
We intend to hold that banner up because the Catholic priesthood wants 
to pull it down. 

Of course, the Atheists demand that the Bible shall be put out 
of the public schools. Every enemy of religion in Cincinnati says 
"it is tyrannical" to read the Ten Commandment^ and the Golden 
Rule in the common school. Every man who "don't care" 
whether religion is up or down, provided he stands firmly on his 
own feet, is willing the Bible shall be expelled from the repubhc 
of the children. And it may be that a i^vj men hope to get into 
office by trampling the Bible in the dust, and think it a fine thing 
to ridicule its precepts and make fun of little children at their 
prayers. I can understand why numbers of our adopted citizens 
should be estranged, not only from the Bible, but from religion 
itself. In the European house of bondage from which they fled, 
they saw the king and the priest in tyrannous league against the 
people, the school-master a government official, a state ecclesiasti- 
cism forced upon the school ; the Bible, the church, religion, even 
Almighty God, perverted to uphold the sinking cause of tyrants. 
I do not wonder that even men of great gifts and wide culture. 



Religion in the 



especially if reared in the Catholic church of Europe, should revolt 
altogether and teach that Atheism and Democracy are synonymous 
words. I am not surprised that ignorant people are flung off into 
a blasphemous hatred of religion by the reaction from a bondage 
like this. We must bear as kindly and as patiently as we can this 
temporary estrangement, especially of a part of our German adopted 
population, from religion. Their children will see these things in 
another way, and will understand that in America God does not 
mean an earthly king, or Jesus Christ an earthly lord, or religion a 
State church, or a minister an enemy of the people, or the Bible 
in the school-room the invasion of any right. They will learn that 
all these things with us mean the very thing they came here to find, 
the largest liberty of man ; that the temple of American liberty 
stands firmly buttressed by education, morality, and religion ; and 
that we keep the Bible in the common school, not to play the 
tyrant over any man, but to keep the children of the republic close 
to the great standard of "education, morality, and religion" recog- 
nized by modern times. We warn them that there is a clique of 
atheistic demagogues in our western cities, whose principles are as 
hostile to our American institutions as the theories of the men who 
lately sought to take our nation's life. We tell them that those 
men are not safe guides for them or their children ; not the men to 
be put into places of honor and trust in the civil or the educational 
life of the people. They will inevitably lead their deluded follow- 
ers into a collision with American civilization that will plant new 
seeds of bitterness and estrange those who should be one. For it 
may as well be said now as later, that the people of this country, 
who were born and educated in this republic, will not submit to 
the banishment of religion from their civil life; will not expel the 
Bible from their school and exalt Atheism, under any fine modern 
name, to be the national school-master; will not see the national day 
of worship mad^p a day of public disorder and deliberate insult of 
the nation's faith ; will not submit to the atheistic programme of 
operations in any region of our national life. And if these men 
can not take warning, and will not understand the deliberate judg- 
ment of the American people, they must go on and learn the lesson 
in the way themselves may choose. They may put out the Bible 
to-day from the schools of this or that community, but it will come 
back with thirty millions of people as its body guard. They may 
silence the children's hymn of praise to God to-day, but the hymn 
will be taken up by the voice of "a multitude that no man can 
number," and the people will sing Old Hundred over their political 
graves. The American people know the Catholic priesthood, and 
they know the priesthood of atheistic socialism, and they will have 
neither one nor both of them to bear rule in the common school. 



Coimnon Schools. 4^^ 



Last evening a meeting was held at Pike's Music Hall, to protest 
against the reading of the Bible in the common schools of Cincin- 
nati as '' illegal and tyrannical." As a demonstration of the people, it 
was a more significant failure than the one already held at Green- 
wood Hall. The assembly was not large, and was evidently com- 
posed to such an extent of the friends of the book that, if we are 
to judge by the printed reports, no resolutions were offered, and 
no vote demanded. But the two most learned and eloquent sup- 
porters of the resolutions now before the school board to expel 
religion were there in full force. Nobody certainly knows the legal 
strength of the cause better than the accomplished Judge Stallo, 
and certainly no clerical assailant of the Bible can bring to the 
work greater learning, or a more peculiar rhetoric, or a more exter- 
minating logic, than the Rev. Mr. Vickers. Of course I can not 
attempt to follow these gentlemen, step by step, but there are cer- 
tain aspects of their defense which it may not be improper to 
notice. 

First. Both these gentlemen seem to have studiously evaded the 
entire body of legal and historical argument put forth by the friends 
of religion in the common school. It has been shown by us that 
neither the United States nor any State of this Union ever intended 
to establish a government, or an order of society, which should be 
hostile, or even indifferent, to unsectarian religion ; that while 
American institutions guard the people, in every way, from the 
union of Church and State, and the imposition of sectarian religion 
or ecclesiastical establishments upon them as citizens, they equally 
provide against public Atheism, by asserting the great central obli- 
gation of states and men to worship and obey God, and do good to 
mankind. This has been shown by the words of the constitution, 
by the laws and usages of the government, by judicial decisions, 
and the clear opinions of every eminent statesman of the country, 
from the creation of the republic to the present day. How is this 
wall of evidence assailed in these elaborate speeches? It is simply 
ignored. As far as those speeches were concerned, there might 
have been no American republic, and no history of the American 
people. A ^QW sneers and contemptuous flings at the authors of 
this argument, a little pleasantry at their expense, and a flat assertion 
that the constitution and government have nothing to do with 
religion, is the extent of their demonstration in this direction. 

In place of the government and order of society established by 
the American people, these learned gentlemen propose a purely 
scholastic theory of society, and claim such rights for the individual 
citizen as would dissolve any government into a German mist. In 
their ideal republic, the government would ignore religion alto- 
gether, through the whole region of public life; indeed, they say gov- 
ernment has never touched religion except to damage it. Now, I 



^6 Religion in the 



shall agree with them that the government does injure religion and 
oppress the people, when it supports religious or atheistic sects, and 
enforces sectarian theories upon the people. But it was to provide 
against this very danger that the people of the United States have 
established their government and order of society on religion itself, 
as opposed to sectarianism, or atheism. The American people say, 
" Religion and morality are essential to good government." If our 
logical friends can see no difference between this assertion and the 
assertion of the European idea of a state-established religion, they 
simply do not understand the practical genius of the American 
people. In the language of Chief Justice Story, "the attempt, by 
the framers of the Constitution of the United States, to ignore, or 
be indifferent to, religion in that instrument, would have been met 
with universal indignation." Doubtless, there is a sect of political 
philosophers who believe in a government that lets religion alone, 
but the American people never joined that sect. The whole con- 
ception of such a government as looms through the rhetoric of 
Pike's Hall is as foreign to our American idea of society as the 
imperialism of Russia. It is a scholar's dream, well enough for 
platform emergencies, which disappears at a moment's contact with 
real American life. 

The strongest point in these elaborate discourses is a perpetual 
and offensive charge of persecution against the people of the United 
States as respects Catholics and Atheists, especially in the common 
schools. Now, what are the facts in regard to this matter ? The 
Catholic, or Atheist, is "persecuted" because compelled to pay a 
tax to support the government of the United States, and the State 
governments, which secure to all men the greatest amount of lib- 
erty yet possessed by any people in the world. The Catholic and 
Atheist are "oppressed" because that government acknowledges 
the obligation of states and men to obey God and do good to man, 
and expresses that obligation by protecting the citizen in the enjoy- 
ment of all forms of religion, and making certain public acknowl- 
edgment of the dependence of the whole people on Almighty God. 
Such acknowledgments are public worship, reading of the Bible, 
and imposition of oaths by the paid servants of the people. The 
use of the Bible in the schools is simply on this ground. There is 
more religious acknowledgment in the public schools, because it is 
most important that the youth of the country should be impressed 
with their religious obligations as citizens of the State. In private 
instruction, in the family, in the church, they learn the value of 
religion in their private, social, and eternal life. By these observ- 
ances in the school, they are taught those great first truths of 
religion and morality essential to them as citizens of the Sta':e. 
This, then, is the amount of the "persecution" so ostentatiously 
and offensivelv charged against the American people: the enforce- 



CoTYimon Schools. ^7 



ment of a tax to support a government, and public institutions, 
which assert that ''religion and morality being essential to good 
government," some public observance of religion and morality 
shall be made. Now, this seems to me about the mildest form of 
persecution yet invented by man ; and to conjure out of this the 
visions of bloodshed and slaughter that shocked the audience at 
Pike's Hall, seems to me to prove that more than one man in Cin- 
cinnati is afflicted with a " gigantic imagination." 

To what does this whole style of reasoning conduct us ? If cor- 
rect, one Catholic citizen of the United States, or any State, may 
demand that all recognition of religion shall be put out of public 
affairs because there is no other religion than the Catholic, which 
the State will not adopt. One atheistic father may demand that all 
acknowledgment of God shall be put out of our common schools 
because it is an offense to his conscience to pay a tax to a govern- 
ment that acknowledges the truth of religion. And if the nation 
or the schools decline this modest demand, they are classed among 
the tyrants and oppressors of the earth, with Nero and Robespierre. 
What is this but our old Southern friend, the doctrine of State 
Rights, pushed to its finest point ? The nation can do nothing 
without the consent of the state; the state nothing without the 
consent of every citizen ; the school nothing without the consent 
of every tax-payer. This whole reasoning lands us in a slough of 
absurdity and anarchy worthy a professor of German transcend- 
ental philosophy, or a French socialistic politician. The new gos- 
pel of American rights, as expounded in Pike's Hall, is only John 
C. Calhoun's doctrine of state rights, run to seed ; a demonstra- 
tion of the impotence of scholastic theories of society when brought 
in collision with the solid facts of American life. 

Both these speakers denounce the Rev. Mr. Mayo in unsparing 
terms as guilty of criminal misrepresentation of the tendency and 
purport of Mr. Miller's resolutions now before the School Board. 
They indignantly deny that it is the intention of such resolutions to 
banish religion from the schools of Cincinnati, and make a public 
profession of religious belief in their own case in proof of their 
assertion. After such public confession, certainly nobody will 
charge Judge Stallo or the Rev. Mr. Vickers with being an atheist. 
So far the Rev. Mr. Mayo has made this charge concerning no 
individual by name. The point of my first lecture was that, under 
Mr. Miller's resolution, religion in any form of written, spoken or 
musical expression could not exist in our common schools. Teach- 
ers, scholars, and trustees might be religious, but there could be no 
expression of religion such as I have described, and this utter 
ignoring of all religion, I asserted, was essential Atheism. 

Now, leaving outside the cloud of peculiar rhetoric, in which my 
assailants have enwrapped their offensive charge of misrepresenta- 



^8 Religion in the 



tion, I point once more to the resolutions themselves. If words 
mean anything, those resolutions banish religious instruction, the 
reading of religious books, the reading of the Bible, and the singing of 
religious songs, from the school-room. Nothing is said about prayers, 
but as the only prayer used in our schools is Lord's prayer, which 
is a part of the Bible, praying goes too; for I believe nobody has 
accused Mr. Miller of omitting this prohibition in order to change 
the common school of Cincinnati to a morning prayer-meeting. 

Now, when all these things are put out of the school, I respect- 
fully ask these gentlemen how much religion in any outward form 
of expression will be left 1 You may say, the practice of religion 
in the conduct of teachers and scholars. It 's constitutional to be 
religious, but unconstitutional to say anything about it. If you 
should propose to cut off a man's head, both his arms and both his 
legs, the poor victim would not get much consolation from your 
assertion that the heart, the source of life, was left, and that you 
were the dearest friend of his physical existence. I am inclined to 
think if all methods of verbal expression of religion were forbidden 
in the schools, their moral and religious life would bleed to death 
through these ghastly wounds. Suppose, when the Rev. Mr. 
Vickers entered his new church, on Plum street (which is, probably, 
after his confession of faith, not to be dedicated to " that weak de- 
coction of religion called Unitarianism,") suppose his trustees should 
ofFer to him, as the decision of his congregation, a resolution, say- 
ing, " that religious instruction, reading of religious books includ- 
ing the Holy Bible, and singing of religious hymns were forbidden 
within its walls," it strikes me the reverend gentleman would con- 
clude that his occupation as a teacher of religion in that house was 
gone. We are not all gifted with the masterly logical faculty that 
illuminated Pike's Hall so magnificently, last evening, but the plain 
people of Cincinnati understand those resolutions to be aimed at 
any recognition of religion itself in the common school. If gentle- 
men who support them are indignant at this popular understanding, 
they can easily remove this misapprehension by withdrawing the 
resolutions and substituting those of a different style. 

But I now take one step farther, and boldly charge that this 
movement of the School Board is part of a well-understood rriove- 
ment, dating back for some years, to drive religion, in all its forms 
of verbal expression, out of the schools; made by men who do not 
regard it a personal offense to be charged with this intention ; who 
are what men in all ages have called materialists and atheists. 
Every member of the Board of Education, for the last 'i^^ years, 
knows of the existence of such men and such intentions in that body, 
not by inference, but by an observation of the spirit and a weighing 
of the utterances there made. It has been declared, and that not con- 
fidentially, that our public schools would not be perfect until the 



Cominoji Schools. J^O 



name of God could not be mentioned therein. More than a year 
ago, a prominent member of the Board, and understood supporter 
of these resolutions, in an address before all the teachers, at their 
autumnal institute, announced the doctrine that religion and morality 
should not be taught at all in the schools, save as a special topic of 
investigation in the highest department. A few months later the 
Board adopted the phonic system of teaching the children to read. 
By this system the teaching of reading, spelling, writing, and, to 
some extent, grammar, in the two lower grades of the district 
schools, which contain more than a third of our school children, is 
almost wholly oral in connection with the black-board and the use 
of objects ; a vast improvement on all former systems of in- 
struction. It became necessary to dispense with the two reading 
books then in use in these grades and to substitute one better adapted 
to the new system. The gentleman before alluded to, presented to 
the Committee on Course of Study a new published work, "The 
Phonic Reader," understood by them to have been compiled by the 
principal and assistant of a school of which he was the influential 
trustee. On examination of this book, the Committee on Course of 
Study and the Superintendent of the schools were startled by certain 
remarkable omissions. It contains 128 lessons and 112 pages; each 
lesson being a syllabus suggesting subjects and words for the use of 
the teacher, with reading lessons for beginners. Almost every topic 
connected with the purely material life of childhood is introduced, 
but if there is the slightest recognition of God, of a spirit in man, of 
the immortal life, of any religious obligation of duty, or even more 
than the faintest recognition of the social affections and the im- 
agination, it was so disguised that it could not be found after careful 
search. A child may read that book through, from beginning to 
end, and never suspect from it that he is different in kind from 
other animals; has any Creator, or any life beyond the narrowest 
plane of materialistic existence. As one member of that commit- 
tee, I called attention to this fact and asked an explanation. Several 
were given which did not touch the point, but the consideration 
was urged that the book was only a syllabus, and that every teacher 
could supplement these lessons with those in which the spiritualities 
of life would be introduced. This was true; and with such assu- 
rance the book was permitted to come in on trial. The teachers 
have found that it has other deficiencies ; that its circle of topics 
shuts the children up in the dryest enclosure of childhood's life, and 
have supplemented it with such topics and illustrations outside this 
region as they had the right to produce. 

But now comes in the other half of the programme, in these 
resolutions, under vi^hich no teacher can supplement the Phonic 
Reader with any illustrations which involve the recognition of relig- 
ion in any form ; and if those resolutions pass, the parents of Cin- 

4 



50 Religion in the 



cinnati will probably be interested to know that one-third the chil- 
dren in the schools will be shut up in a reading book which 
ignores almost every thing outside their animal life. That will do 
for a beginning. On its heels, of course, in due time will follow a 
whole series of school-books of the same type. I only half believed 
at the time that this book was urged upon us with such a view. I 
now believe it was thus introduced by the presiding spirit of this 
movement in the Board of Education; and if religion is not alto- 
gether rooted out in that body, I shall use my best endeavors to 
put it out of use in the public schools. Now I assert that here is 
a fair chain of proof that there is a party in the Board of Educa- 
tion laboring to put all religion out of the schools. It may be 
that the speakers at Pike's Hall and the mover of these resolutions 
were ignorant of these facts ; but they are thoroughly known to 
every man who has sat in that circle for the last two years. I 
may overrate the importance of such facts, but [ have made no 
intentional misrepresentation of anything. 

I have charged that the original plan, concocted in private session 
between certain members of the Board and certain Catholic priests, 
included the provision that the use of Catholic school-houses rented 
to the Board should be reserved by the priests two days in the week 
for religious purposes, while all religious instruction whatever should 
be excluded from other public schools. I said this was in effect 
to establish a Catholic mission in the heart of our public school 
system. To break the force of this charge, one of these speakers 
point to another provision which forbids religious instruction in all 
school-houses owned by the Board. This does not touch the point 
at all. A case just in point now exists in San Francisco. The city 
has hired a Catholic school-house for a public school. The Cath- 
olic priest of the parish persists in holding Catholic religious services 
for the children on Saturday and Sunday of every week in that, his 
old school-house. The city has repeatedly ordered him to desist, 
but he will not budge an inch. That is just what this provision 
contemplated. The facts are that the Catholic priesthood well 
knew of an element in the Board opposed to any religion in the 
schools. They offered a union which, on one hand, banished all 
religion from the public schools on five days in the week, and gave 
up a dozen school-houses for two days to them for the Catholic 
training of the school children, and Mr. Vickers says twenty-six 
members of the School Board agreed to it. I am glad so many of 
them are now ashamed of that whole proceeding. 

This whole public excitement has not been called into existence 
by any demand of the people, but precipitated upon the people by 
a combination of two parties, well known to every man. First, 
the attempt was made to put out all religion from the schools except 
the Catholic ; that child was still-born. Next came the peremptory 



CoTmnon Schools. 51 



demand in Mr. Miller's resolutions to put out all religion whatever 
from the public schools. That has become so offensive that its 
friends are making haste to repudiate their own offspring. Then 
the assailing column fell back on the proposition to put out only the 
Bible. A vast majority of the people declare this shall not be done. 
Now, after abusing and ridiculing every body who has resisted these 
demands, the Rev. Mr. Vickers offers a compromise, that a manual 
shall be made, containing the best portions of the Bible ; in other 
words, the passages that are usually read by our teachers shall be 
gathered into other books or a book and read there; but this on 
condition that the whole Bible shall first be put out. Gentlemen 
must pardon my lack of confidence if I prefer to have the whole 
Bible kept in, and leave our able principals and faithful teachers 
themselves to make the selections, rather than turn the old book 
outdoors and then call these gentlemen to preach in such fragments 
as may be agreeable to themselves. My notion is, that the Board 
will do better to turn the resolutions outdoors, thereby quieting this 
public excitement, and leave the common school to go on in the 
ways of pleasantness and peace. 



